Feasibility of using Class E space for public unicast (was re: 44/8)

Sat Jul 27 18:11:40 UTC 2019

On 2019-07-26 11:01 PM, William Herrin wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 10:36 PM Doug Barton <dougb at dougbarton.us 
> <mailto:dougb at dougbarton.us>> wrote:
> > So I'll just say this ... if you think that the advice I received 
> from all of the many people I spoke to (all of whom are/were a lot 
> smarter than me on this topic) was wrong, and that putting the same 
> LOE into IPv6 adoption that it would have taken to make Class E usable 
> was a better investment
>
> Doug,
>
> "Better investment?" What on earth makes you think it's a zero-sum game?

Because for all of us there are only 24 hours in a day, and the people 
who would have needed to do the work to make it happen were telling me 
that they were going to put the work into IPv6 instead, because it has a 
future. As Owen pointed out, no matter how much IPv4 space you added, 
all it would do would be delay the inevitable.

> "Same level of effort?" A reasonable level of effort was adding the 
> word "unicast" to the word "reserved" in the standards. Seven letters. 
> A space. Maybe a comma.
I don't recall seeing your draft on that .... refresh my memory?
> That would have unblocked everybody else to apply however much or 
> little effort they cared to. Here we are nearly 20 years later and had 
> you not fumbled that ball 240/4 might be broadly enough supported to 
> usefully replace the word "reserved" with something else.
You give me /way /too much credit on that. I was the reed tasting the 
wind on this topic. I was not the wind. I (like every other IANA 
manager) had exactly zero authority to say, "You SHALL NOT pursue making 
Class E space usable for anything!" The opportunity existed then, and 
still exists today, for anyone to make it work.
> You're right about one thing: you won't be able to convince me that 
> your conclusion was rational. No matter how many smart people say a 
> stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing.

So as my last word on the topic, I return you to the point above, that 
whatever the discussion was 20 years ago, there is still no workable 
solution.

If you'd like another perspective, here is a reasonably good summary:

https://packetlife.net/blog/2010/oct/14/ipv4-exhaustion-what-about-class-e-addresses/

Doug

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