My analogy would be that unless you pay tripple rent you are not allowed to sub-let (connect more PCs with official addresses, atough you could always get married (NAT)) or start a small shop in your garage (put up a Warez sorry Web server)
No! no! no! :) I only want a fixed frontdoor (1 fixed IP address), but I am trying to force my landlord into letting me have it without paying tripple rent, by asking the government (RIPE) to give me a building permission to install more doors. Not because I want more doors, but to keep the landlord from moving my single door every day :)
Moving from a volume charge service (dialup) to a fixed fee service (DSL) I do not find it that unreasonable to in some way limit the amout of Internet you can consume.
I agree totally, but that is not my point. The point is that currently among all ADSL providers in my area, I can only choose between - package A: 1 dynamic IP, 1 or 10 GB traffic/month, no servers etc. and - package B: 1 static IP, 25 GB traffic/month or more, guaranteed minimum speed, web/mail server allowed, router+webspace+mailboxes included etc. Package A is fine for me, except the dynamic IP. I do not want to run servers or connect multiple computers (unless by using NAT). I want to connect through a firewall that only allows connections based on source IP address.
I have always assumed that IP addresses is a comodity ISPs hand out with their services. If you buy service from an ISP then you get a reasonable number of IP addresses to use that service. If you buy a singe-user service, you get 1 IP address, if you buy a LAN service you get several addresses.
Again I totally agree, but this is not the case in my area, imho.
If you don't buy the right kind of service from me, I am not going to acknowledge your IP address request.
I am indeed afraid that this will be the ISPs' opinions, so I (sorry: the customer :)) guess threatening to go to the competition is the only way. But if there is no competitor offering what the customer wants, it's going to be a meaningless threat... thanks for your opinions, Herbert