classful routes redux

Thu Nov 3 14:10:53 UTC 2005

Please pardon the crossposting between ppml and nanog...

Geoff Huston <gih at apnic.net> writes:

> Why /48 rather than /47 or /49? - alignment to nibble boundaries to
> make DNS delegation easier.

It has recently come to my attention that we are in error when we
expect "n[iy]bble" to have the same amount of popular awareness as
"byte".  In point of fact, my guess is that most people who are not
programmers (or particularly assembly language programmers) have
minimal or no exposure to the term.  Particularly in public policy
discussions, such people abound, and their engagement in the process
is no less important than that of a protocol implementer.

Future proposals involving a preference toward doing things with 4-bit
alignment should take care to explain what precisely a "n[iy]bble" is
and hexadecimal numbering, and why it matters.

                                        ---Rob