IP address fee??

Fri Sep 6 20:04:08 UTC 2002

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Joe Abley wrote:

> How many people learn about networks from certification courses or
> in school, anyway? It was always my impression that people learnt
> mainly by listening to other people.

Well, maybe, if you define "listening to people" as "reading what people
write".

> If networking on the front lines is an informal oral tradition more
> than it is a taught science, then perhaps it's natural for obsolete
> terminology to continue to be "taught" long after it stopped having
> any relevance.

Actually, I would assume it to be the other way around: if you only
communicate with people who are active in the field who are aware of all
the new tricks, how are you going to learn about obsolete stuff?

About classfulness: I think it's more relevant, even today, than many
people like to admit. Why is it that I can type "network 192.0.2.0" in my
Cisco BGP config and the box knows what I'm talking about, but "network
192.0.2.0/24" is no good?

If it doesn't do anything else, at least IPv6 will get rid of this
problem.

Iljitsch van Beijnum