Class D addresses? was: Redploying most of 127/8 as unicast public

Sun Nov 21 21:20:23 UTC 2021

On Sun, Nov 21, 2021 at 4:16 AM Eliot Lear <lear at ofcourseimright.com> wrote:
> In 2008, Vince Fuller, Dave Meyer, and I put together
> draft-fuller-240space, and we presented it to the IETF. There were
> definitely people who thought we should just try to get to v6, but what
> really stopped us was a point that Dave Thaler made: unintended impact
> on non-participating devices, and in particular CPE/consumer firewall
> gear, and at the time there were  serious concerns about some endpoint
> systems as well.  Back then it might have been possible to use the space
> as part of an SP interior, but no SP demonstrated any interest at the
> time, because it would have amounted to an additional transition.

Hi Eliot,

I wasn't in the working group so I'll take your word for it. Something
rather different happened later when folks on NANOG discovered that
the IETF had considered and abandoned the idea. Opinion coalesced into
two core groups:

Group 1: Shut up and use IPv6. We don't want the IETF or vendors
distracted from that effort with improvements to IPv4. Mumble mumble
titanic deck chairs harrumph.

Group 2: Why is the IETF being so myopic? We're likely to need more
IPv4 addresses, 240/4 is untouched, and this sort of change has a long
lead time. Mumble mumble heads up tailpipes harrumph.

More than a decade later, the "titantic" is shockingly still afloat
and it would be strikingly useful if there were a mostly working /4 of
IP addresses we could argue about how best to employ.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin
bill at herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/