CIDR,Sprint and the Big Guys.

Fri Apr 5 06:38:23 UTC 1996

> 	Here now shows that Sprint is getting a /15 from the nic and that 
> they can now server more customers, move their ips around with little 
> problem, etc. But what about some other ISP? Can they get a /15? Nope. 

Right.

> But I bet you that if Sprint wanted to or even MCI for that matter, they 
> could get a /14 or a /13 from the nic.

Wrong.

Sprint and MCI have a track record with InterNIC and they have shown that
they can efficiently use the next-smaller allocation size.

> 	How can we solve this problem? How can we make sure that everyone 
> has equal access to IP addresses to make IP addresses usable around the 
> Net, save on router memory etc?

Anyone who shows that they will be an efficient suballocator will get larger
blocks as they fill up their initial smaller ones.  If IANA did as you suggest
and allocated huge blocks to everybody who can fib together a business plan,
there would not BE any unallocated address space by this time, yet the number
of reachable hosts would be lower than it is now.

A great deal of work went into the InterNIC's allocation policies.  Before you
offer to rewrite them, you should do some homework and find out how they got
to be the way they are now.