David Conrad wrote:
I'm sure the same argument was used for telephone numbers when technical folk were arguing against number portability.
Number portability is a different can of worms, and many telephone companies pushed for it. However, telephone numbers have been assigned in large blocks, when only 1 number might be needed. This was a big issue for CLEC dailups, where 999 numbers could go to waste. If ARIN handed out prefixes the same way, there wouldn't be any IPv4 space left.
"Dude! Check it! I got a /20 for my house, man! It was a steal. Remember in the day when ARIN wouldn't let me have it because I only have 2 hosts here?" *insane laughter* .... or .... "IPs for sale! We've acquired 20 /8 networks! How big do you want to go?" (given that laws have indicated a dislike for domain squatting, I wonder how IP squatting would work?)
-Jack