Redeploying most of 127/8, 0/8, 240/4 and *.0 as unicast

Fri Nov 19 14:30:38 UTC 2021

Nick Hilliard wrote:
> John Gilmore wrote on 19/11/2021 01:54:
>> Lowest address is in the most recent Linux and
>> FreeBSD kernels, but not yet in any OS distros.
>
> lowest addresses will not be viable until widely supported on router 
> (including CPE) platforms.  This is hard to test in the wild - ripe 
> atlas will only test the transit path rather than the local 
> connection. I.e. it's not clear that what you're measuring here is a 
> valid way of working out whether a lowest address is generally going 
> to work, because .0 has been mostly accepted in the transit path since 
> the 1990s (bit alarming to see that it's still not universal).
>
> The other risk with the lowest address proposal is that it will break 
> network connectivity transitivity with no fallback or detection 
> mechanism.  I.e. consider three hosts on a broadcast domain: A, B and 
> C.  A uses the lowest address, B accepts a lowest address, but C does 
> not.  Then A can talk to B, B can talk to C, but C cannot talk to A.  
> This does not seem to be addressed in the draft.
>
> Nick
>
>

Its very viable, since its a local support issue only. Your ISP can 
advise you that they will support you using the lowest number and you 
may then use it if you can....all you may need is a single 
patched/upgraded router or firewall to get your additional static IP online.

The rest of the internet has no bearing on it.

Joe