> Please don't try to engineer other people's networks
because they are
> not going to listen to you. It is a fact that 240/4
addresses work fine
> except for one line of code in IOS, MS-Windows, Linux,
BSD, that
> explicitly disallows packets with this address. People
have already
> provided patches for Linux and BSD so that 240/4
addresses work
> normally. Cisco would fix IOS if the IETF would
unreserve these
> addresses, and likely MS would follow suit, especially
after Cisco makes
> their changes.
Now, please explain the magic method you're going to use to
cause that
"one line of code" to be removed from more than a
billion devices that
are currently able to use the Internet.
Remember that a lot of these devices are deployed in spots
such as little
gateway NAT devices owned by John Doe at 123 Anydrive, and
so when he is
unable to get to some website because some brilliant hosting
service has
chosen to place a bunch of servers on 241.2.3.0/24, his
reaction is most
likely going to be "so and so sucks" and move onto
a competitor's web
site.
Further, when one of your magic clients with the
"updated" version of
Windows XP that supports "IPv4-240+" and the
misfortune to actually *BE*
on one of those decides to contact pretty much any existing
website on a
VPS that's on "auto pilot", and there's a ton of
those, dontchaknow, we
are talking a problem significantly worse than "failed
to update bogon
filters". Not only does the hosting company have to
fix their bogon
filters, but they also have to fix the TCP stack on every
server under
their control, which is going to be extremely labor
intensive.
Do we want to start discussing all the other places that
knowledge of
network classes is built into software, and the subtle ways
in which things
may break, even if they appear to "work" for some
crappy definition of
"work"?
Please don't try to re-engineer the entire IPv4 Internet
because you'd like
a small additional allocation of IP space that isn't
currently usable.
... JG
--
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me
one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n
position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way
too many apples.
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