Good intent and somewhat competent

[Jeremiah Kristal]

On Sun, 19 Jan 1997, Nathan Soward wrote:
>
> Gee I would also like to have a shot at becoming a multi Millon-air.  I
> would quit my day job and any other job for a shot at this. Greed is an
> ugly thing.  Who do these guys think they are kidding, somebody is going
> to get rich here.  I wonder how much the 5 trustees are going to make
> from this deal? What if one of the Big Guys or may be three MCI Sprint
> AT&T etc. decide to buy all of the address space what do you think an IP
> address will cost then?
>
Nathan, please read the proposal before you post conjecture.  This is
taken directly from the webpage:

The stability of the Internet relies on the careful management of the IP
addresses.
Recommendations have also been made that the management of the IP space
should be placed, as it is with RIPE and APNIC, under the control of and
administered by those that depend upon and use it - the end users. Those
users include ISPs, corporate entities, universities and individuals.

If you had been following this list, you would know that this proposal is
to move the job of allocating IP addresses away from the present system,
which is dependant upon funding from the NSF, because the NSF will soon be
withdrawing its financial support.  There has been no mention of any plan
to sell IP addresses to the highest bidder, except off-topic comments by a
couple of people who want to scuttle the entire IP allocation plan either
because they do not understand the complexities of internet routing or
they are so untrusting that they don't believe anyone would possibly do
something just for the good of the internet.  The present IP allocation
method is set up in such a way as to *prevent* large providers from
hoarding allocations, if you're not using a significant percentage of your
present allocation, you can't get another one.  It's as simple as that.
Were there to be a major shift in the allocation requirements that would
lead to one or more providers grabbing a huge block of address space
without generally agreed upon justification, the other large providers
(i.e. those who exchange BGP routes at the NAPs) would just not accept
advertisements for the strongarmed routes.  When Sprint stopped accepting
new route advertisements that were smaller than a /19, they didn't just
wake up and do so, they had been warning people for months that if people
continued to advertise /24s and such, that the routing tables would become
so large that no router could handle them.  People continued to advertise
small blocks, so they did what they felt was justified, and I don't think
any large provider felt that Sprint was wrong, even if they may have been
ecstatic that Sprint took the fall as the "bad guy out to kill the small
ISP".

Jeremiah


      ________
      \______/                  Jeremiah Kristal
       \____/                   Senior Network Integrator
        \__/                    IDT Internet Services
         \/                     jeremiah at hq.idt.net
                                201-928-4454