Fixed Boundary (/29) Assignments

On Wed, 7 Feb 2001 09:04:15 -0700 (MST), David R Huberman wrote:

>Hello everyone,
>
>It is my experience, both as a former RIR employee and as a former
>employee of a large residential DSL provider in the United States, that by
>affording all residential broadband provider the flexibility to make
>address policy along a fixed /29 boundary will result in MORE conservation
>of address space, not less.

I appreciate your insight, David, but I fail to see this point. How do you save IP 
space by assigning 8 IP addresses instead of just one?



>
>Residential broadband is a market that is demand driven. The RIRs should
>be seeking to take addressing out of the competitive side of the market,
>and equal the playing field for all providers in the name of address
>conservation.

Absolutely agreed, however, in the rest of your message you seem to imply that 
fixed boundary assignments are a must if one wants to stay competitive. I don't 
doubt that. Although I don't see this happening down here, I appreciate that you 
share your experience as an indication of the scenario we are going to be facing 
shortly.


>It has been my experience that customers will ask for MORE address space
>(3+ usable, publicly-unique addresses), not less (I only have one PC, so
>obviously I only need 1), when given a choice.

Yes, just as when they take five ketchup bags at McDonalds and they use only one. 
>From a consumer point of view, MORE no-matter-what is BETTER. I think it is sad 
that some people are starting to use IP addresses as assets to make their offer 
look better.


>If, other factors being equal, customers can shop broadband providers on
>the basis of 'how much publicly unique address space will you provide me',
>an imbalance will inevitably result - the long-term consequences of which
>would be increased IP wastage.
>
>RIPE needs to allow providers to assign /29s to residential broadband
>customers without question and apply its justification policies only for
>residential assignments shorter than a /29.

Mmmm... Disallowing automatic fixed boundary assignments for that purpose for 
everyone would work just as good in balancing the market.

I wish IPv6 technology would be common enough between LIRS so we could give every 
residential customer 32 IPv6 addresses or 1 IPv4 address at their choice, so that 
woud skyrocket the demand of low-end IPv6 hardware and solve the address problem 
forever.

Regards

Javier Llopis			BitMailer 
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