Re: Internic address allocation policy

[jis () mit edu (Jeffrey I. Schiller)]

At 22:05 3/19/95, Vadim Antonov wrote:
> You may like it or dislike it but nation-wide backbone providers
> effectively run the Internet nowadays.  It is a rare case when
> big businesses actually introduced some common sense in the way
> things are done architecture-wise.  Why not to do the same with
> the address allocation?

Speaking from a (large) user organization. I am very concerned about
having the ISPs performing address allocation, particularly aggregating
addresses. As a user, I want to be able to change my service provider
if I get a better deal from a competitor or am having service
difficulties with my current provider. Today's technology for managing
addresses on individual computers makes it very hard for an
organization to renumber. Literally every computer administrator needs
to be in the loop. This can be a large loop when you have 13,000+
independently managed machines (like we do).

How do we users get our say to ensure that an addressing architecture
doesn't come into existence which tends to lock us into a particular
provider?

                        -Jeff