Last Resort Registries

  > poole at eunet.ch writes:
  > 
  > This is all going severely to fast for my taste. Essentially the decision
  > is not to close down the last-resort registries, but not to allocate
  > unique address space anymore except for Internet connected organisations.

This is *not* the case! Your observation is right in the sense that
there is a clear *trend* in the Internet community towards a situation like
this. The particular decision to abandon last-resort registries is not
equal to "not allocate unique address space anymore except for Internet 
connected organisations". All the remaining registries remain free to
allocate to non-connected organisations. See ripe-127 for details.

  > There are perfectly good reasons why an organisation might want unique
  > (but not necessarily globably routable) address space, RFC1597 doesn't
  > provide this.

I agree with you. However, these organisations should also be aware 
that such address space may not be automatically routable on the Internet.
Again see ripe-127 for details.

Again: Abandoning last-resort registries does not mean that it will
be impossible to obtain public address space without an Internet
connection. Yes it will become more difficult and end-users will
be warned better about whaqt they are getting.

Daniel