I see that the review phase for this proposal ends in a few days. http://www.ripe.net/ripe/policies/proposals/2006-05.html I would like to speak in favour of allowing end users to get a minimum of a /24 allocation when routing is an issue. For instance, a customer with an application running out of a data centre has their own AS number and wants to get PI space from RIPE. Since data centres typically hide their architecture using RFC 1918 space behind NAT and load balancers, etc., it doesn't make sense to allocate a longer prefix just because their publicly visible machines fit in less than a /24. For instance, if RIPE were to allocate a /26 (64 addresses) rather than a /24 (256 addresses), the number of addresses saved is only 192 which is such a small number that it cannot be considered significant on the larger scale. The issue of routing table slots is irrelevant since the End User intends to announce their prefix whatever its length is. I don't believe that there is any advantage to conserving such small amounts of space. Instead of dancing around the issue and forcing people into creative host accounting to justify a /24, let's just make it simple and offer that as the minimum when, and only when, the End User can show that routing is an issue. I would not be surprised to find that RIPE requires such End Users to already have an Asnum or apply for one at the same time. That seems reasonable. ------------------------------------------------------- Michael Dillon RadianzNet Capacity Forecast & Plan -- BT Design 66 Prescot St., London, E1 8HG, UK Mobile: +44 7900 823 672 Internet: michael.dillon@bt.com Phone: +44 20 7650 9493 Fax: +44 20 7650 9030 http://www.btradianz.com Use the wiki: http://collaborate.intra.bt.com/