Redploying most of 127/8 as unicast public

Sun Nov 21 05:00:14 UTC 2021

Owen DeLong wrote:

> Agreed. But I have every right to express my desires and displeasures with widespread plans to encourage what I perceive as misuse and that’s exactly what’s happening here.
>
> My right to attempt to discourage it by opposing proposed standards is exactly equal to your right to encourage it by promoting them.

Since your discouragement may take form in preventing some amount of 
improvement or amelioration to IPv4 users, there is a human cost 
associated to that.

Absent the equivalent clear correlation of harm to whatever else you 
believe those resources are engaged in, I would not say those two 
behaviors are of equal consequence.

> I’m really saying what I said. That IMHO, there’s no benefit to the internet overall if this proposed change is accepted and/or implemented and I see no benefit to standardizing it. As such, I remain opposed to doing so.

There is a clear difference of opinion on this, that there stands a very 
good chance that prompt implementation now may prove to provide 
significant benefit in the future, should IPv6 continue to lag, which 
you cannot guarantee it wont.

Further, there is historical precedent that discouraging re-purposing 
IPv4 addressing is the wrong decision.

>
> Whether or not the effort that would be wasted implementing it would go to IPv6 or to some other more useful pursuit is not a concern I factor into my opinion in this case.

And I appreciate that, as I consider that reasoning to be specious at 
best, morally dubious at worst.

> Again, have not made any such assumption here, either. It’s not relevant. The only thing I consider relevant is that any resources expended on a complete waste of time could be better
> expended elsewhere.

I dont consider my opinion as to what people's effort should be spent on 
relevant to whether a particular proposal has merit all of its own.

>> Which GUA and LL are not, no matter how readily available and easily assignable and otherwise equivalent they are in every way but the one. They are not loopback designated by standard (and system implementation).
> And this matters why?
>
> Owen

So re-purpose 127/8 and if users and developers agree with you, it will 
become available right about the time IPv6 should have finally managed 
to obsolete IPv4, no harm no foul. And if it fails at that again, at 
least we will have 127/8 and cohorts.

Joe