Allocations for "always-on" ISPs

I'm very glad my mail sparkled such an interesting discussion.
I see three main threads developing:
1) NAT or not to NAT
2) prohibit /29 for residential users
3) where is IPv6
First of all let me try to put these problems in the context I was referring to in my mail. The service providers I was thinking about are those who want to offer an always on connection to customers that wont' simply surf the net. Once you have always on connectivity to the Internet you may end up buying an Internet washing machine (http://www.margherita2000.com) and an Internet camera (http://www.axis.com/products/camera_servers/index.htm). These are servers, not clients. Chances are that most devices like these will be manageable by a web browser,so they simply don't work behind a NAT/PAT.
So, in this context, these are my opinions regarding the three threads :
1) NAT is bad for users that want to connect to the Internet, see http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2993.txt and PAT is much worse. NAT/PAT is not an option in the scenario above.
2) how many addresses should RIPE allow a LIR to give to always home customers? /32, /30, /29 ? IF we want to couple a customer with a subnet, I agree with people that are thinking about a /29 at least, because a /30 leaves only one address for your PC. So you cannot use your camera to watch your washing machine doing its job ;-) An alternative would be not to couple a customer with a subnet and give each customer as many address as they need. This would work but would make security, multicast, and probably a few other thins harder to manage.
3) IPv6 is good, see http://search.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iab-case-for-ipv6-06.txt and the service I'm describing would be much easier to deploy if we had it. Why don't we have it yet? Because we make a fundamental mistake in assessing IPv4 addresses exhaustion rate: we count how many addresses are actually allocated/assigned, not how many addresses people would actually need to access the Internet in a decent way. I've personally worked with two very big companies, one that offers always on Internet access, and the other GPRS. They have not even tried to contact the RIPE to request the public IPv4 addresses they would need to offer an architecturally sound service (see: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1958.txt) because they feel they will never get the number of addresses they anticipate to need!! So they try to get away with NAT, and fail. In this way we get the wrong picture and don't realize how much we need IPv6 today, and neither do the network equipment vendors. So I agree with Lars and Oystein: let's run out of IPv4 addresses once for ever, so we can move on to the next stage. And for that matter, let's stop being restrictive about allocations and assignment: let's give plentiful of addresses so we run out faster!! And I'm not kidding.

Cheers

bruno