Re: [44net] And the fraud begins.

Not today of course. But back when Phil got the 44/8 allocation, in the early 1980s, was before the IANA existed, (founded in 1988). ARIN did not exist until 1997. In 1985, I had already been a Ham for 20 years (talk about old tech!). I am vastly over simplifying the history here, which always gets me jammed up. But if you needed more than what a class C network provided, 256 addresses, you got a class B. If you needed more than what a class B provided, 65,000, you got a class A, or 16M addresses. There was nothing in between the classes, no CIDR, no netmasks. Not even “routers” really existed. There were way more than 65,000 Hams in the world in 1980, so it was easy to justify. Back then, the address space was typically issued to individual people, and basically had no value. So there was no real incentive to establish a community. More like "I’ll just hang on to it for now, too much paperwork to set up a club.” What a difference 40 years makes. It’s now speculated the entire 44/8 block is worth well in excess of US$300 million. If that asset was in my name, I don’t know that I would have made the same decision. I am grateful. -k9dc