ok, i did it again, tried to fit a square peg in a round hole. while the immediate problem is past, thanks to the ncc reg folk, i fear that we could benefit from thinking a bit more about $subject. for a research experiment, we wanted eight or a dozen routable, i.e. /24, prefixes which we would announce from various places in the topology. each /24 would have one pingable address, let's assume .42. because this is ops based research, we have to o go through the ncc bureaucrazy o actually deploy and test o run the measurements for a few months o do the analysis o possibly tune or vary the experiment o write the paper and submit it o wait three months for the accept/reject o if rejected, retune and submit to a different venue o the reviewers may ask for us to re-run to get fresh data for publication o whine whine this takes six to twelve months. if you are familiar with $subject, you will sense there are two problems here. 587 is designed for a much shorter time window, and it kind of assumes more that 1:256 utilisation. you can imagine that my request to registration services generated a bit of discussion :). as our social environment has become less tolerant, reg services understandably wants simple rules they can follow and which clearly justify their actions. and geeks such as i just want our mtv :). i suspect we may be able to wordsmith conditions to deal with the time length issue. but i suspect that codification of guidelines covering the needs & justifications for research experiments, folk qualifying strange devices, and those doing other weird things will not be so easy. i am considering a policy proposal in this space; but want to learn what others see and think, and to see if it is worth the time and effort. and can we please keep discussion focused on temporary address space assignments? thanks. randy