Last of ipv4 /8's allocated

Wed Feb 9 00:58:24 UTC 2011

On Feb 8, 2011, at 4:46 PM, Curtis Maurand wrote:

> 
> 
>> Touché!  That could theoretically happen. I think Apple should buy HPQDEC just so they can announce 16/7 :-)
>> 
>> None of the RIR blocks are going to be routed that way on purpose, though :-)
>> 
>> -Randy
>> 
>> 
> I agree.  Many of those corporations would have a hard time justifying an entire /8, even IBM.  They just don't run large public networks any longer.  Much of what they do is done on private nets.  I would make all of the corporate legacy networks justify their /8's.  I'll almost bet none of them can justify them any longer.  I worked for a large medical company (30,000 seats) and we didn't use an entire /24.
> 
> --Curtis
> 
> 
It doesn't have to be a public network to need globally unique addresses.

There is NO policy requirement to use NAT or RFC-1918 for private networks. Just a suggestion that folks be considerate of the community where they can.

I'll bet most of them would have no problem under current policy. They only need to show need for ~8,000,000 hosts, including subnet overhead.

If you wanted to, your medical company could have easily justified at least a /17 and probably a  /16 under current policy.

There's really nothing to be gained from attempting to go after what might be reclaimed from the legacy block holders. EIther
they will return their addresses or contribute them to the market or they won't. Attempts at forced reclamation will only make
that situation worse and are unlikely to result in any actual reclamation of addresses before the conclusion of protracted
and ugly law suits that would be very expensive. Such lawsuits are unlikely to reach conclusion before the need for
massive quantities of IPv4 address space is in the past.

Owen