Re: [Idr] new ID on expansion of private use ASN range

[Jeffrey Haas <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Jul 03, 2012 at 09:39:48AM -0400, Jon Mitchell wrote:
> [JM] This is interesting, however given these ASNs are in use today and
> there is widespread mis-understanding that the 65535 ASN is a private
> use ASN already based on widespread vendor and other networking
> documentation, I think publishing this informational draft to
> officially allocate it as such is not going to cause a rush of changes
> to use it on devices this old.  However new implementors would have
> clear guidance on what a private ASN if they are trying to comply with
> this draft/RFC if/when it's published and therefore could avoid this
> leaving this open to error in new implementations.

There is another very strong argument to leave AS 65535 alone as a reserved
AS rather than noting it can be used as "just another private AS":
Communities.  While users of that AS would likely be addressing their
communities to someone else's AS, why preclude them from being able to
receive any addressed to their own AS?

(If it's not immediately apparent, RFC 1997 well known communities are
effectively addressed to AS 65535.)

-- Jeff