Axel, On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 04:42:55PM +0200, Axel Pawlik wrote:
Scarcity of IPv4 addresses is just one very obvious, self-perpetuating myth that needs to be killed.
I am afraid that not all your membership agrees with this. The very fact that one has to become member of an organization with significant fees, that one has to go to training courses in order to understand how to get addressess and that one has to understand all kind of policies before one gets the actual ipv4 addresses that one needs means that they are in fact a scarce resource.
From the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary:
scarce adjective not easy to find or obtain: Food and clean water were becoming scarce. scarce resources ipv4 addresses certainly qualify as 'not easy to obtain'. One has to do considerable effort to get some and even then, one hardly ever gets the amount that one would really like to have. Businesses and isps would be able to cut a lot of cost if they could get larger allocations, waste more space and be more relaxed in their ipv4 address inventory management. We cannot afford to do that because the resource that you are managing is indeed a scarce resource. The only reason that the RIPE NCC is needed is exactly for the reason that ipv4 addresses are a scarce resource. There might be enough for them for the near future if we keep rationing the distibution as we do now but we would certainly run out rather quickly if your organization would just give away ipv4 addresses to the people/organizations that ask for them. As I understand it, your core business is the management of a scarce resource and I don't see any reason why you should spend time killing a 'self-perpetuating myth' that is not a myth at all. David K. ---