Internic address allocation policy

Sat Mar 18 18:30:30 UTC 1995

Speaking as a national network with millions of dollars invested (AAI),
I tried for three months to get a Class B assigned.  The total number
of hosts didn't justify it, even though it was nationwide with many
geographic sites that we wanted to subnet, and even though we are doing
research in ATM SVC signalling, ATM multicast, NHRP, etc.  So we got
a CIDR block of Class C's, and as expected, many of our systems are
turning out not to handle the required subnet masks without hacks.

While this has all been a pain I wished to avoid, we do really need
to get this CIDR stuff to work everywhere, and we really are running
out of address space.  So while I agree that address space struggles
with the InterNIC aren't pleasant (or quick), I think they are doing
what needs to be done to conserve a scarce, dwindling resource.

- Phil