240/4

Thu Oct 18 22:37:20 UTC 2007

On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 11:48:00AM -0600, Alain Durand wrote:
> 240/4 is tainted. The fact that some code exist somewhere to make it work is
> good, but the reality is that there are tons of equipment that do not
> support it. Deploying a large network with 240/4 is a problem of the same
> scale as migrating to IPv6, you need to upgrade code, certify equipment,
> etc...

Sorry, but this is a completely bogus argument. 

The edits necessary to allow 240/4 took about 10 minutes on Linux (figuring
out the kernel build/install process took longer, but I'm out of practice).
OSX (and perhaps FreeBSD) doesn't require any changes - you can already
configure 240.1.1.1/24 on your Mac today. For someone familiar with deploying
binary patches on Windows, Linux, etc., I'm guessing that appropriate changes
could be available in a matter of days.

Compared to the substantial training (just getting NOC monkeys to understand
hexidecimal can be a challenge), back office system changes, deployment
dependencies, etc. to use ipv6, the effort involved in patching systems to use
240/4 is lost in the noise. Saying "deploying a large network with 240/4
is a problem of the same scale as migrating to ipv6" is like saying that
trimming a hangnail is like having a leg amputated; both are painful but one
is orders of magnitude more so than the other.

	--Vince