Market-based address allocation

Simon Lyall simon.lyall at ihug.co.nz
Wed Apr 30 22:38:30 UTC 2003


On Wed, 30 Apr 2003, Jack Bates wrote:
> IPv4 address space, while adequate to currently meet our needs, is
> limited. The reason it is adequate is because we do require
> justification. Take away justification and put on a $ value, and the big
> money makers will buy it all, lease it out to people at variable rates,
> and watch the money roll in. Never underestimate greed. It's the
> foundation of business.

Well considering a good proportion of the ipv4 space has already been
given away to large companies, institutions and government bodies without
any sort of oversight.

Lets assume that one of the companies currently holding a Class A decides
to go into the ip business. I can't see it being too hard for them to
setup a small website, whois server etc where you can pay online and get
a network at around $100/year per /24. This is cheaper for smaller
organisations than signing up to ARIN and the lack of paperwork (and
potential quick service) will probably attract others.

Companies will always have the alternative of going via ARIN,RIPE,APNIC so
the commercial register will have an incentive not to jack up prices too
high.

The networks advertised will be a legitimate as old /16s and /8s allocated
years ago to organizations 1% of the size that would justify them. Even
better if people are actually paying hard cash for the netblocks then they
are more likely to only get what they want and efficiently use them.

It would seem to be a better use that the Class A is actually getting used
by people rather than being largely (99%) unused by the company concerned.
It's not like IANA is going to ask for Ford, HP or Xerox to actually
justify their allocation any time soon.

Of course I'm sure some people here will refuse to accept the
announcements and mutter about routing table size. One the other hand the
same people seem to be happy with the current inefficient legacy allocations.

-- 
Simon Lyall.                |  Newsmaster  | Work: simon.lyall at ihug.co.nz
Senior Network/System Admin |  Postmaster  | Home: simon at darkmere.gen.nz
Ihug Ltd, Auckland, NZ      | Asst Doorman | Web: http://www.darkmere.gen.nz




More information about the NANOG mailing list