Fwd: 41/8 announcement

Tue May 30 15:39:31 UTC 2006

Stephen Sprunk <stephen at sprunk.org> wrote:
[...]
> It's extremely ugly, but that's what one gets for using private address
> space. This exact scenario was a large part of why I supported ULAs for
> IPv6.

I can sort of see the point in ULAs, although if you want a globally unique
address, why not just use a public address? Anyway, the problem is that
nobody actually seems to have bothered to read RFC1918 and/or realise the
possibility of collision:

   If two (or more) organizations follow the address allocation
   specified in this document and then later wish to establish IP
   connectivity with each other, then there is a risk that address
   uniqueness would be violated.  To minimize the risk it is strongly
   recommended that an organization using private IP addresses choose
   randomly from the reserved pool of private addresses, when allocating
   sub-blocks for its internal allocation.

I tend to pick out random /24s from 172.16/12 when I need private addresses.
Virtually nobody uses those, which makes them most suitable.

-- 
I have heard it said that the reason Microsoft is choosing to work with the
government of Nigeria in stopping 419 scammers is that it's easier to rebuild
the Nigerian government and economy than to fix the bugs in Microsoft code.
						- Mike Andrews in the Monastery