Just to put a little perspective on this whole debate about forseeing your
IP address needs, I was cleaning out my desk and found a copy of a message
sent on June 5, 1984 to me (then haas@utah-20.arpa) thanking me for getting
the X.25 connection to Japan working. The whole Internet has evolved in
the 11 years since. I'm a fairly serious amateur student of technology
history, and I'm not aware of any other technology that has grown at
comparable speed. I think it would be nice if we gave the folks at the
InterNIC a break, and recognize that they are attempting to deal with a
situation which is basically impossible. The only thing which I can
see offering any real hope is IPng, with RFC 1597 as a plausible stopgap -
at least I hope it's plausible since I'm recommending it to clients, most
of whom are paranoid about security and want a firewall anyway.
-- Walt