Removing the needs-based requirement would break open the entire IPv4 market, letting big corporations to buy everything available and then decide who they are willing to sell it for the highest price. IP addresses will become a tool to obstruct competitors, wipe-out all smaller players and locking the market for newcomers. An authority validating each request with the current policies could somewhat prevent that from happening. At 09-10-2012 12:16, Tore Anderson wrote:
* Gert Doering
James' proposal has its merits, but OTOH, just loosening up sub-allocations might be the approach more appropriate for "the time we're living through".
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While we still do not have much experience with sub-allocations, the warning "if you hand it all out, you might not get new space easily, so be wary" is moot - it's now "if you hand it out, there will not be any more space, period!", and LIRs should have noticed *that* by now...
The way I see it, this argument applies equally well to LIR->EU assignments, and to {LIR,EU}->{LIR,EU} transfers. I don't understand what makes sub-allocations special here.
It would IMHO be much more interesting to see a proposal that would retire the needs-based principle completely for all forms of IPv4 delegations (that aren't taken from the NCC pool). Does it really serve any useful purpose nowadays?
If some LIR wants to give away (assign, transfer, sub-allocate - whatever) all their remaining free space to someone who doesn't really need it - why not let them? It won't impact me or anyone else since their wasteful spending can no longer translate into an increased draw from the shared pool. I, on the other hand, would certainly not miss the assignment request documentation bureaucracy.