On Sun, 28 Nov 2004, Ewen McNeill wrote:
(a) scarcity: the number of possible IP addresses (4 billion) is rather less than the number of possible domain names (37 ** 63 per name segment)
I'd hope that instead of using an economic disincentive to stop people from using up large amounts of IP space, the system of having to justify your IP usage would be sufficient. As has been pointed out by others, there are number of organisations sitting on significant IP address blocks.
(b) impact on other people's systems: a DNS delegation just sits quitely on a couple of DNS servers in a corner, minding its own business, until someone happens to ask about it; a prefix advertised into the global routing table ends up occupying space in every router in the world with a "full table" and being shuttled around between them fairly often.
But with none of this money that is paid to APNIC being shared amongst all of the router owners, I don't really see this as a viable argument.
(c) volume: a block of IP addresses consists of multiple addresses; at the US$1250/year mark, that's over 1000 usable addresses. If you were to get 1000 $20 domain names, it'd cost more than US$1250/year :-)
But since an IP address isn't an individually advertisable/usable entity, and only a block of IPs is, wouldn't it be better to compare a block of IP addresses with a domain name? --David