On Wed, 7 Feb 2001 09:04:15 -0700 (MST), David R Huberman wrote:

Hello everyone,

It is my experience, both as a former RIR employee and as a former employee of a large residential DSL provider in the United States, that by affording all residential broadband provider the flexibility to make address policy along a fixed /29 boundary will result in MORE conservation of address space, not less.

I appreciate your insight, David, but I fail to see this point. How do you save IP space by assigning 8 IP addresses instead of just one?

Residential broadband is a market that is demand driven. The RIRs should be seeking to take addressing out of the competitive side of the market, and equal the playing field for all providers in the name of address conservation.

Absolutely agreed, however, in the rest of your message you seem to imply that fixed boundary assignments are a must if one wants to stay competitive. I don't doubt that. Although I don't see this happening down here, I appreciate that you share your experience as an indication of the scenario we are going to be facing shortly.

It has been my experience that customers will ask for MORE address space (3+ usable, publicly-unique addresses), not less (I only have one PC, so obviously I only need 1), when given a choice.

From a consumer point of view, MORE no-matter-what is BETTER. I think it is sad

Yes, just as when they take five ketchup bags at McDonalds and they use only one. that some people are starting to use IP addresses as assets to make their offer look better.

If, other factors being equal, customers can shop broadband providers on the basis of 'how much publicly unique address space will you provide me', an imbalance will inevitably result - the long-term consequences of which would be increased IP wastage.

RIPE needs to allow providers to assign /29s to residential broadband customers without question and apply its justification policies only for residential assignments shorter than a /29.

Mmmm... Disallowing automatic fixed boundary assignments for that purpose for everyone would work just as good in balancing the market. I wish IPv6 technology would be common enough between LIRS so we could give every residential customer 32 IPv6 addresses or 1 IPv4 address at their choice, so that woud skyrocket the demand of low-end IPv6 hardware and solve the address problem forever. Regards Javier Llopis BitMailer javier@bitmailer.com Juan Bravo 51, Dup. 1-Izq Tel: +34 91 402 1551 28006 Madrid Fax: +34 91 402 4115 SPAIN