Re: My thoughts on local-use addresses

[Daniel Senie <[e-mail]>]

At 10:22 AM 4/29/2003, John Stracke wrote:
>Arien Vijn wrote:
>
>>On 26-04-2003 19:35PM, "Keith Moore" <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>What is wrong with having addresses available for private use on
>>>>networks that do not intend on being connected to the Internet?
>>>>
>>>in principle, nothing.  but experience has shown that most of those networks
>>>do end up being connected to the Internet, while still keeping those 
>>>addreses,
>>>and that applications are expected to cope with that.
>>>
>>Ehm... What experience? You are referring to experiences with RFC1918
>>addresses in the IPv4-world, aren't you?
>I think Keith is most likely referring to the experience from before 
>RFC1597, when isolated networks would use random addresses, and then run 
>into trouble when they wanted to connect.  Even if the networks were 
>NATted, the users would suffer because they would never be able to 
>communicate with the legitimate holders of the addresses.

Indeed. Many folks used Sun's address block, since Sun used their own IP 
address space in their documenation for examples. Even worse than randomly 
selecting, this meant many people collided both in the ways we all know 
about when two RFC1918-numbered networks merge and in terms of conflicts if 
trying to connect to the public network.

Many NANOG folks are busy screaming that everyone who's got pre-RIR address 
space that's not publicly routed should be giving it up and using RFC 1918. 
Many IETF folks are similarly trying to eradicate the use of any non-public 
IP address space. Clearly we have a major disconnect between the IETF and 
the operations communities. And while the response to this posting will be 
"IPv6 space is limitless," I would argue that ignores the past, and the 
possibility of a repeat in the future.