> Eg, I picked a number at random - 52.0.0.0/8. This is owned by
'dupont.com'
> who I'm sure are a wonderful company, but they 'only' have 85000 employees
> - why on earth do they need 16M IP addresses, even if each employee has 10
> PCs they've still got 15.9M spare addresses? They aren't an ISP so they
> aren't giving the addresses to other people. There are other similar
examples.
Why would people pay for Address Space, when it is FREE ?
But why should it be free? Any commodity which is in limited supply
probably shouldn't be free, or people abuse the facility and grab that
commodity in bulk while they can meaning that other people can't get it.
At something like $1 per IP address per year (retail - ISPs would get a
discount..), it probably wouldn't really affect anyone who USES their IP
addresses efficiently, but it would certainly make the hoarders rethink
their situation.
If RIPE, APNIC, ARIN etc said 'in 12 months we will be charging people for
IP addresses', people would HAVE TO pay for IP addresses or relinquish
them. So, that's WHY people would pay for them..
The only problem I have with paying for IP addresses is - who would the
money go to - but that's a separate issue.
Paul VPOP3 - Internet Email Server/Gateway
paul(_at_)pscs(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk http://www.pscs.co.uk/