[lir-wg] Static IP addresses

On Wed, Oct 02, 2002 at 08:05:22PM +0200,
 Bob Arnesen <bob.arnesen at telia.com> wrote 
 a message of 288 lines which said:

>  *       Is Telia’s current practice as I have described considered a breach
> of privacy for the private person/customer?

When the connection is through a leased line (companies, universities,
etc), it is very common that every machine has a fixed IP address. It
is currently the case with my machine in my office. It seems it has
never been a problem. Only dialup users were used to dynamic addresses
but they are not the norm.

RFC 3041 discusses a similar problem for IPv6. Most of the discussion
applies to IPv4. I quote it:

   A more interesting case concerns always-on connections (e.g., cable
   modems, ISDN, DSL, etc.) that result in a home site using the same
   address for extended periods of time.  This is a scenario that is
   just starting to become common in IPv4 and promises to become more of
   a concern as always-on internet connectivity becomes widely
   available.  Although it might appear that changing an address
   regularly in such environments would be desirable to lessen privacy
   concerns, it should be noted that the network prefix portion of an
   address also serves as a constant identifier. 

> *       Is Telia following agreed International and /or European standards
> regarding IP addresses?

It is not RIPE-NCC business to do anything about privacy issues.