Re: Independent space from ARIN

["Stephen Sprunk" <stephen () sprunk org>]

Thus spake "Dave Israel" <davei () algx net>
> Ah, but when you buy address space, are you going to be happy about
> giving it back when you change providers?  Will the provider give you
> a fair price on selling it back?  Do you think sales departments won't
> insist you buy their address space when you connect?  And if you can
> keep it, it makes the routing table more and more interesting.

That's already standard practice today, except you're forced to lease PA
addresses instead of buying them and selling them back.  However, this
discussion is really limited to PI space, which has completely different
economics.

> That's a pretty brash thing to say on Merit's mail server.  Much of
> the research and coordination of the Internet is done by research
> groups and universities.  It isn't inefficiency that keeps their
> available cash for address space down; it is the nature of their
> business.

While I'm sure we all value Merit's contributions to the Internet, both past
and present, you cannot seriously believe they are even remotely efficient
in their use of 35/8 -- nor can one expect them to be without financial
incentive.  What boggles my mind is they managed to get allocated another
668,424 addresses in CIDR land -- do a whois and see for yourself.

> It's this kind of thing that keeps areas of the radio spectrum
> licensed by the government.

And the govt licenses that spectrum to the highest bidder, plus allows
owners to sell spectrum to each other as assets.  Pretending the RIRs are
even remotely similar is disingenuous.

S

Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking