IANA reserved Address Space

Sun Jun 1 06:29:18 UTC 2003

On Sat, 31 May 2003 bdragon at gweep.net wrote:

> The only difference between routed and unrouted (note the difference
> between that and routable) is consensus. There is nothing inherent in the bits
> which prevents RFC1918 from being routed globally. There is no requirement
> to use RFC1918 for NAT.

Correct, an error in terminology on my part.  Substitute "routed" or
"public" for the first and "RFC1918" or "private" for the second.  I think
we all know what was meant.

> Therefore, your argument doesn't hold water.

The minor error in terminology doesn't really affect what I was trying to
say.  There may be valid reasons where, within a closed lab environment, it
could be useful to use public, routed space not assigned to the entity that
is operating the lab.  I listed some.

> If the entity for some stupid reason can't use RFC1918, they can and should
> use their _own_ address space for the balance.

And if the reason isn't stupid, and proper safeguards are in place, and
they're not training people to do this anywhere BUT within a closed lab
environment, then it makes no difference what addresses they use.  Even
if the reason is stupid, no one outside the lab will know or care.

If it makes it easier to debug problems with decimal or binary addresses
that are easy to parse, or to paste configurations from a production
system to a lab for troubleshooting, so what?

-- 
Jay Hennigan - CCIE #7880 - Network Administration - jay at west.net
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