9 ms·

It would maybe work, but it would also vastly complicate everything. Debugging and logging, setup, maintenance would all be rigged to support that address reuse

• xorcist 6y ago
  If you have dynamic allocation of customer IPs, you have to store that data anyway.
  • corty 6y ago
    Yes, but you need a lot more gateways, jumphosts and general indirection to deal with the different network segments. And you need to customize a lot if stuff, because you can't just log "it came from 10.12.13.14", you need to log the network segment and gateway it came from as well. Non-flat address spaces are hell. That said, the real solution is IPv6
    • ajross 6y ago
      > but you need a lot more gateways, jumphosts and general indirection to deal with the different network segments That hardware is already there. You don't think they share one giant switch between 16M addresses, do you?
      • corty 6y ago
        That hardware isn't already there. They won't share a switch, but they will share routers. IP routing with overlapping networks doesn't really work, so you have to get creative with e.g. DNAT or proxies. Both of which consumes additional resources, even if the routers can do it, you will have to buy bigger licenses, processors will have more load, etc.