legacy /8

Sat Apr 3 18:54:43 UTC 2010

On Apr 3, 2010, at 6:17 AM, Robert Brockway wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, jim deleskie wrote:
>> Just like 640k or memory :)
> But what if I said "640 petabytes will be more than anyone will ever need".  The future might prove me wrong but it probably won't happen for a long time.   That's a better analogy for IPv6.

Not really.

The reason some folks aren't sanguine about the amount of address space available in IPv6 is because (a) it is a fixed size and (b) the policies by which the address space are allocated are subject to the whims of human behavior.

For example, recently in RIPE, they were folks arguing for people to be able to get /24s just by saying they were using a particular transition strategy.  For another example, there are governments arguing in the ITU that countries should receive large blocks (/8s have been suggested) so IP addresses could be handed out like telephone numbers (the concepts of route system scalability are irrelevant to these folks).  

With these sorts of policies being seriously suggested, it is probably appropriate for folks who remember the history of address policy to speak out.

Regards,
-drc