All this impacts very severely on the commercial decisions taken as to the routeing of traffic. I would much rather buy more lines to the US and let the traffics flow back to Europe then to just buy lines to Europe. Luckily, commercial concerns are not the only contraints within which we have to work.
What this has to do with RIPE allocation policies is beyond me. Everyone in the European realm suffers from extremely high tariffs. So what?
Sorry - I do not know your background, but here in the UK, in business, money and financing matters. If I can show that I could buy two lines for the same amount of money; where on would be 20% utilised on average and the other at 80% then any money (wo)man will take the second option as it is *seen* to be better use of the money.
You and hundreds of other companies approach RIPE with the same story of how big they are, how large their investors are, how their network is gonna take the world of the Internet by storm, and therefore they deserve a /16 or even a /15. If RIPE followed your logic, there would be no more address space left.
I have to say it, even if I was trying not too, - but we *are* the largest dialup IP provider in Europe. Anyone want to argue ? We are not a new provider asking for a new allocation. We have a large, installed customer base that is growing at between 10 and 15% per *month*. This is difficult enough to manage in terms of our infrastructure. I am doing two things in Amsterdam this week. One is the RIPE, the other is visiting our Amsterdam operation, which is due to go live very soon now. Other countries to follow. We are not new comers here is what I am trying to get across. I think we have suffered in terms of the Internet politics because we have been too busy being concerned about our customer base...
Use dynamic IP like the rest of us. We all realize the drain of IP addresses and try our best to maximize the addresses. Why should you be different?
Because we have a grwoning customer base that has been buying that particular product fastre than we can sell it for 3 1/2 years now.
It all depends on your ego. You could just look at them as an organization assigned the tough role of making sure there are IP addresses available in 1999. You see it as God. A viewpoint based on your world view.
Roll on IPv6 - that will be hell for us, but we will cope. I do not want "fix" what isn't actually broken now, or is likely to be.
IBM has 460 POPs in over 40 countries and uses dynamic IP addresses. I can be in London or NYC or Tel Aviv and still use my SLIP connection to read my mail wherever I am. Why should you have static IP addresses for something others can do the dynamic way and thereby conserve IP address space?
Your mail yes, but can you access secure systems that use IP filtering ? Can you run a BBS from midnight to 5am and p expect people to find your host by domain name ? Can you get SMTP mail delivery ? etc etc. We have always been selling a full Internet connection, not just access. Regards, -- Peter Galbavy peter@demon.net @ Demon Internet phone://44/181/371_3700 http://www.wonderland.org/~peter/ snail://UK/N3_1TT/London/42_Hendon_Lane/Demon_Internet_Ltd/