On Sun, 2010-07-25 at 01:42 -0500, Jack Bates wrote:
This is my concern. A business would rather be assured uniqueness over gambling, no matter what the odds. Given no additional services are needed, the administration cost is the same as handing out snmp enterprise oids. The fact that the community isn't offering such due to politics is disheartening and just plain sad.
"No matter what the odds"? A good business person weighs the odds carefully and takes calculated risks. The chance of a conflict if you choose a random ULA prefix is lower than just about any other risk an enterprise would even bother considering. There is much more chance of an employee going postal, of a massive lightning strike, of a disastrous fire or flood, of a two-week power outage, than there is of a ULA prefix conflict, and all those things will cause far more real damage than a ULA prefix conflict. The risk of a ULA prefix conflict is for *all practical purposes* zero. It is a far lower risk than almost anything else you probably have contingency plans for. Not only that, but *even if the event comes to pass*, it is merely an inconvenience. Not only that but it is an inconvenience that can be detected in plenty of time and planned for and mitigated with relative ease. There may be good arguments against ULA, but the risk of prefix conflict is not one of them. Please let's stop behaving as if a ULA conflict is some kind of accident waiting to happen. If an expert stood up in court and said "the chances that this fingerprint is the defendant's are a million to one", and the prosecutor then said "Aha! So you admit it's *possible*!" we would rightly scorn the prosecutor for being an innumerate nincompoop. Yet here we are paying serious heed to the idea that a ULA prefix conflict is a real business risk. Sheesh, if we professionals can't get a grip on what these tiny, tiny probabilities really *mean* then how is anyone else going to? Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (kauer@biplane.com.au) +61-2-64957160 (h) http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/ +61-428-957160 (mob) GPG fingerprint: B386 7819 B227 2961 8301 C5A9 2EBC 754B CD97 0156 Old fingerprint: 07F3 1DF9 9D45 8BCD 7DD5 00CE 4A44 6A03 F43A 7DEF