Fixed Boundary (/29) Assignments

 
> In my experience, most residential customers are quite happy to use private 
> IP addresses

I must respectively disagree, and disagree vehemently. In my experiences,
residential broadband customers, paying high monthly fees, demand publicly
routable IP address space, citing both the very 'limitations' of private
address space you articulate (e.g. Napster and other IP-dependent
applications) and sales pitches of other providers who are willing to give
them publicly unique address space just to close the deal.
 
> For those customers requiring real IP addressing, I find that many of these 
> are businesses. As such, it is very limiting to leave them with a /29

We are not discussing commercial broadband customers. The fixed-boundary
assignment 'proposal' is exclusively for residential broadband customers.
 
> My main object is with assignment based on usage requirements . I know 
> people who run offices with dozens of people of a dual channel ISDN line. 
> Does this make them less worthy of IP addreses that a single home user with 
> a 3Mb DSL line? 

IP requirements for commercial customers are based on traditional address
policies - as such, organizations can obtain as much address space as they
require based on justification. No one is ever denied address space which
they can justify, right?

> I know that IP conservation is now more important than ever, but
> surely this could be policed better by promoting the use of private IP
> addressing, rather than by restricting users who cannot afford to buy
> more bandwidth.

Those who use private addressing schemes should certainly feel good about
themselves, but no one is being restricted. If you can justify address
space per the published criteria, you get it.

More importantly, the conservationist's desire to promote the use of
private address space should not take precedence over real-world business
concerns. Market demand for residential DSL is high, and in many markets,
IPs have become a selling point. By allowing fixed-boundary assignments,
RIPE effectively removes that facet of competition, equalling and opening
the playing field to all and reducing IP waste in the long-term.

/david