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That IP address configuration screen in the MacOS of yesteryear was amazing, wow. The slider to select the number of host/network bits is slick. I wonder why we
by tbrock 6y ago
That IP address configuration screen in the MacOS of yesteryear was amazing, wow. The slider to select the number of host/network bits is slick. I wonder why we don’t have something like that today.
- duskwuff 6y ago> I wonder why we don’t have something like that today. Because CIDR happened. The net/subnet/node nomenclature used by MacTCP is a relic of classful routing.
- inetknght 6y agoJust because CIDR happened doesn't mean that the subnet selection isn't relevant anymore.
- icedchai 6y agoHowever, classful subnet selection is not longer relevant today (A, B, C...) The Mac UI limited you to those three classful subnet masks. Today, it's much simpler to type /26 after your IP address instead of entering 255.255.255.192, or playing around with a non-standard host/network slider.
- duskwuff 6y ago> The Mac UI limited you to those three classful subnet masks. And it assumed a specific network architecture -- e.g, if you have a class A network, the middle two octets of your address represent a "subnet" and the last octet represents a "node". This may have been appropriate in pre-CIDR networks where all local nets were /24, but it's no longer true today; it's not uncommon to have networks which split on non-octet boundaries.
- davidwtbuxton 6y agoThat UI only made sense if you already understood: - That there were 4 octets in an IP address. - Class-based IP addressing. - Subnet bit masks. The UI that replaced it was an improvement in that all it asked for was a series of numbers, separated by dots, constrained to 0-255.