Re: Objection to draft-ietf-6man-rfc4291bis-07.txt

Simon Hobson <linux@thehobsons.co.uk> Tue, 28 March 2017 07:02 UTC

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Subject: Re: Objection to draft-ietf-6man-rfc4291bis-07.txt
From: Simon Hobson <linux@thehobsons.co.uk>
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Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2017 08:02:23 +0100
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Alexandre Petrescu <alexandre.petrescu@gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually one can wonder why RFC writers decided to write fe80::/10 when they could have written fe81::/10 equaly well.  Or even fe90::/10 or febf::/10.  All these designate the same 10bits - the mask 1111 1110 10.

I thought this was answered a good few messages ago. It is customary to always write the "lowest value that fits" - ie the one where all the non-prefix bits are zero.
So fe80::/10 fits - all the bits after the first 10 are zero
fe81::/10 does not fit - when you mask off the non-prefix bits you get a different value

So while in terms of maths, after doing the masking you get the same result, by not applying the "all host bits are zero" rule - you have introduced confusion for humans.

As pointed out, 172.17.0.0/12 might make as much sense as 172.16.0.0/12 IFF you ignore this feature. Applying the mask to 172.17.0.0/12 gives you non-zero host bits - hence why we don't use that.
It's all to do with consistency and avoidance of confusion. And we need as much of that as we can - I know plenty of supposedly network capable people who cannot understand the concept of 172.16.1.0/23 being a valid IP address !

But to be frank, I still can't see what the proposal is about - just what use case does it solve ?