number of unaggregated class C's in swamp?

Sat Sep 30 05:17:20 UTC 1995

On Fri, 29 Sep 1995, William Allen Simpson wrote:

> > The great bulk of the world, especially management types, gets their
> > technical news with a 4 to 6 month time delay from glossy technical
> > magazines. This delay is due to the time required for writers to
> 
> I want to thank Mark Kent, and disagree with Michael Dillon.

I notice you cut out my comments about press releases. 

> Last April, folks at IETF stood in the front of the room and said they
> were going to start reducing the prefixes.  I heard within a _month_!

I heard about it too but not until the past few weeks has it dawned upon 
me that there is the intention to FORCE people to renumber networks even 
if they don't change providers. 

> Now, it has been 6 months.  We've already had plenty of time for the
> news magazines to print and management types to absorb the news.

But have the magazines been writing about it? Have there been PRESS RELEASES?

> Others are not so competent.  Time to announce to them that we're sorry,
> but unless they pay out lots of money to upgrade their competitors and
> fund the research, their competitors aren't going to accept their /24
> routes anymore.  We are all in this together.

If this is indeed the type of forceful action being contemplated then 
this certainly deserves some PR chest-thumping. I.e. press releases to 
the mainstream press and maybe a joint press conference with somebody who 
has introduced renumbering tools lik maybe ftp.com.

> Now, the pier wg is trying to help put together a list of OS's and
> pin-pointing "how to" work through renumbering.  That should help.
> 
> But there's no time like the present to get on with doing it!

It wasn't so many months ago that magazines were advising corporations to 
apply for their own "portable" IP addresses so as to avoid renumbering. 
If the tables have so completely turned, then it must be a crisis 
situation and that means somebody has to stand up a=in public and say 
"We're sorry but the unexpected growth in the Internet has FORCED us to 
take this action and even people who don't switch providers will have to 
renumber in order to maintain access to the full global Internet".

Obviously no operational people are panicing because this seems like a 
less serious crisis than routes flapping or a hung router but if there is 
an urgency for the public to take action then that urgency has to be 
commmunicated to them. 

Michael Dillon                                    Voice: +1-604-546-8022
Memra Software Inc.                                 Fax: +1-604-542-4130
http://www.memra.com                             E-mail: michael at memra.com