5 ms·

I was surprised to find that back when I went to college, every computer connected to their network, whether it be the laptops that each student had via the req

I was surprised to find that back when I went to college, every computer connected to their network, whether it be the laptops that each student had via the required technology package, and even personal desktop computers and gaming consoles and every device connected to the network in the dorms, every machine was given a public facing IP address without NAT. Even your phone or tablet on the campus wifi got a unique public IP... Of course there were firewalls in place and all the incoming ports were blocked, but doesn't that seem like a big waste of IPs? The university owns 155.92.0.0/16 and every machine on the network gets a 155.92.x.x IP address. https://ipinfo.io/AS11500/155.92.0.0/16 https://ipinfo.io/AS11500/155.92.0.0/16 Is this normal? Or shouldn't the IPs all be NAT'd behind a few public IPs?

stouset 2y ago
If you own the public IPs, why not use them?
- SirMaster 2y ago
  Sure, but should a school even be given all those IPs to be used like that? Seems like a waste to me to have it where every device on the campus network gets a public IP, like every students phone, laptop, tablet, desktop, game console, etc.
  - stouset 2y ago
    Today, absolutely not. But the damage was done back when those ranges were doled out. That said at this point I kind of half-seriously prefer keeping the IPv4 space as exhausted as possible if it’ll even slightly drive adoption of IPv6.
teddyh 2y ago
Why should every individual person have their own physical mailing address? Couldn’t they just get their paper mail at their workplace? Or is it a vital component of democracy and individual freedom that people can recieve mail and other missives independent of their workplace’s curious eyes and sufferance? Or voting. Should really everybody get a vote? Most people don’t really need to vote. This is evidenced by the huge numbers of people who don’t vote. And most people who do vote do it badly, anyway. /s
eep_social 2y ago
This is at least partly historical. Early adopters got allocated IP space before it was apparent that it would be scarce. I seem to recall that MIT has an entire class A. I think the US military had a whole pile of class As as well. I haven’t kept up with this layer so I don’t know whether any of this has been returned to ease allocation woes, but I doubt it.
- teddyh 2y ago
  As I recall, people have figured that at the speed which IPv4 addresses were given out (before they ran out), even if all possible unused addresses were reclaimed (which would be a huge pain to do), it would last at most, IIRC, a few months more. So it would help some, but would not really be worth it.
p_l 2y ago
You were enjoying IPv4 as it should be deployed. Remember, NAT breaks IPv4. A NAT-ed network is not fully compliant IPv4 network.

stouset 2y ago

If you own the public IPs, why not use them?

SirMaster 2y ago
Sure, but should a school even be given all those IPs to be used like that? Seems like a waste to me to have it where every device on the campus network gets a public IP, like every students phone, laptop, tablet, desktop, game console, etc.
- stouset 2y ago
  Today, absolutely not. But the damage was done back when those ranges were doled out. That said at this point I kind of half-seriously prefer keeping the IPv4 space as exhausted as possible if it’ll even slightly drive adoption of IPv6.

teddyh 2y ago

Why should every individual person have their own physical mailing address? Couldn’t they just get their paper mail at their workplace? Or is it a vital component of democracy and individual freedom that people can recieve mail and other missives independent of their workplace’s curious eyes and sufferance? Or voting. Should really everybody get a vote? Most people don’t really need to vote. This is evidenced by the huge numbers of people who don’t vote. And most people who do vote do it badly, anyway. /s

eep_social 2y ago

This is at least partly historical. Early adopters got allocated IP space before it was apparent that it would be scarce. I seem to recall that MIT has an entire class A. I think the US military had a whole pile of class As as well. I haven’t kept up with this layer so I don’t know whether any of this has been returned to ease allocation woes, but I doubt it.

teddyh 2y ago
As I recall, people have figured that at the speed which IPv4 addresses were given out (before they ran out), even if all possible unused addresses were reclaimed (which would be a huge pain to do), it would last at most, IIRC, a few months more. So it would help some, but would not really be worth it.

p_l 2y ago

You were enjoying IPv4 as it should be deployed. Remember, NAT breaks IPv4. A NAT-ed network is not fully compliant IPv4 network.