consistancy

[Brian Wallingford]

: > : Really, if they can dish out the IPs, they can take'em away.
: > 
: > In a utopian world, yes.  But..
: 
: 	Actually ARIN can take away addresses -from the blocks it was
: 	delegated-.

Understood.  Nothing new there.

: > that, in one forum or another, I've initiated it in the past).  ARIN does
: > *not* have the authority to reclaim legacy space.  Nobody has the
: > authority to reclaim the terribly, irresponsibly underutilised space
: > allocated many moons ago.
: 
: 	Actually the IANA does.  Thats how I manged to get 16% of
: 	the total IPv4 space retruned to the freepool in 1995/1996.
: 	Its doable,

This I didn't know (and I stand corrected).  I was under the impression
that the IANA had been relegated to a figure-head position, viz. QE 2.

So why do GE, MIT, and many colleges/universities, etc. still hold
outrageously large blocks?  Why wasn't this corrected long ago, before
"newbies" like myself started bitching? :)  Why are we faced with this
artificial address shortage?

-brian

ps: Not being combative/belligerent - simply trying to understand.