Shane Kerr wrote:

To be clear, we're not talking about anyone getting more or less address space, or allocating in a way that makes aggregation more difficult. I thought those were the two basic goals of IP allocation policy, right?

The RIPE NCC does not have any restrictions on which particular resources it allocates or assigns. In fact, I am pretty sure that any sensible person would argue that the RIPE NCC should have as much freedom as possible to do things in the most efficient way. So I think the RIPE NCC already has the power to issue "vanity addresses" in the rare case where someone asks for these.

As far as we're concerned we're going to follow all the necessary requirements and formalities needed for assignment of a block of IP-addreesses. We're ready to apply throught a standard procedure from the name of our company, or through one of the present LIRs. We could even get a status of a LIR for our company if needed and pay the initial fee and yearly fees. We hope that an assignment of the minimal IP block of addresses 2.2.2.0/24 (or 2.2.2.0/21) will not cause any routing problems, because the availability of this address from any part of the world will be achieved throught BGP Anycast.

Mostly I find it a pity that the NCC wasn't more accommodating and that we're having this discussion at all. Maybe the software used for this process does not have a manual override or something? Oh well, compared to the horror stories I hear about the bad old days, I guess we have no complaints....

In the end I suppose we can just let the addresses fall wherever and let "the market" sort it out, now that there is a "trading" policy. While the desire for vanity addresses might accelerate the process of IP addresses becoming property, that is probably inevitable, so it won't change the big picture too much.

-- Kind regards, Sergey Gotsulyak Ideco Sales Team 280 Madison Ave, Suite 912 New York, NY 10016 Phone: (800) 715-3502 Email: goz@idecogateway.com Web: www.idecogateway.com