5 ms·

There are large companies pointlessly squatting on huge allocations; some of them assign routable IP addresses for every desktop in their network, despite (sane

There are large companies pointlessly squatting on huge allocations; some of them assign routable IP addresses for every desktop in their network, despite (sanely) firewalling them off entirely from the Internet. Ptacek, I'm a bit surprised to hear this from you of all people. Globally-unique addresses are very useful for things other than direct end-to-end routability. Financial institution question: "What was the last device to hit that mission-critical system?" Answer: "Well, the access logs show 10.100.1.4, but that's the Internal --> DMZ NAT address, so I'll need to check the firewall logs to see." Without NAT in play, network configurations become much easier to conceptualize. ACLs become easier to deal with. Things become more clear. It's a bit of a slur to call even the legacy class-A allocation squatting, being able to do sparse allocation is a godsend. I'm looking forward to IPv6 for this alone. Finally, I cringe at anything that dictates or predicts what an end-user needs: I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a global communications network to provide globally unique addressing.

josteink 14y ago
I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a global communications network to provide globally unique addressing. This a million times. People growing up these days, behind NATs, probably never experienced the internet like it was in the early days. Back when anyone online could offer anything to anyone else without having to resort to "hosting providers" and confined to what they "supported". Because you didn't need anyone to "provide" you with "hosting", because, hey, you were already online! That sort of openness allowed the internet as we now know it to flourish and develop. Who are we to deny the future the same possibilities?
tptacek 14y ago
You've totally missed my point. You read my comment as arguing that we shouldn't have globally unique addresses. My argument is that we shouldn't wait for IPv6 to provide unbounded unique addresses, and in multiple addressing domains and with different service models. There is no reason that we need to be held hostage to Cisco and the IETF.

josteink 14y ago

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a global communications network to provide globally unique addressing. This a million times. People growing up these days, behind NATs, probably never experienced the internet like it was in the early days. Back when anyone online could offer anything to anyone else without having to resort to "hosting providers" and confined to what they "supported". Because you didn't need anyone to "provide" you with "hosting", because, hey, you were already online! That sort of openness allowed the internet as we now know it to flourish and develop. Who are we to deny the future the same possibilities?

tptacek 14y ago

You've totally missed my point. You read my comment as arguing that we shouldn't have globally unique addresses. My argument is that we shouldn't wait for IPv6 to provide unbounded unique addresses, and in multiple addressing domains and with different service models. There is no reason that we need to be held hostage to Cisco and the IETF.