[ih] Some Questions over IPv4 Ownership

[Richard Bennett]

  Seems to me that a prefix is something like a SSN or a credit card #. 
I own these in the sense that I'm the only one entitled to use them, and 
anyone else who holds them out as theirs is committing fraud. These 
identifiers only have significance to the extent that one and only one 
party is entitled to their use.

We used to think that phone numbers belonged to the phone company and 
were leased to subscribers, but now think of them as personal property 
that we can take with us across carriers. I guess that's like a V6 PI 
prefix.

In any event, the original, historical understanding has been supplanted 
and no longer applies.

RB

On 10/12/2010 3:46 AM, Scott Brim wrote:
> I never thought of it as "owning" a prefix.  I knew the prefixes were
> "mine" in the sense that we were the only ones supposed to use them, but
> it felt more collaborative.  We had to use something, someone had to
> administer it, and the NIC told us what would work.

-- 
Richard Bennett