From what I have seen so far, despite them I**3 claims, there seems to be a neverending target with really no end in sight. Like it or not, as several have pointed out already, router still, as already for the last ten years or so, get blown away by the routing table sizes. If you have a well defined funding stream you may be able to upgrade, otherwise you may be screwed. There is no routing plan on a global level that also goes down to the capillaries and their interconnectivity, and
Look, guys, get real. CIDR is a big kluge and it was predictable as such. But as a second or third best "solution" it is necessary to use it, as the powers of anarchy screwed the Internet royally two years ago when the Internet community should have elected NSAPs. Remember the IESG solicitation for IPv7, to then be all done and settled by November 1992 (or was it 1991?). CIDR is just a bandaid because the community does not have its act together, and varieties of things are not driven by operational requirements. I don't particularly like CIDR, as compared to cleaner choices, but believe we have no choice but to use it as much and as best we can. Until the IETF/IESG/IAB/whoever get their stuff in gear and define and follow through on a process that pragmatically looks at requirements, defines a reasonable subset as strategic direction and people go off implementing and deploying it. people naively believe that arbitrary interconnections have to work for generations to come. And if I create a 2400 bps dial up link to London, it has to be possible for the whole US to use it as a fallback, as a solid requirement, right? You have no choice, gang, reality says there are too many routes, routers break, and arbitrariness doesn't scale. Amplifying this will be the dismantling of the NSFNET, resulting in much more of an interconnection weave than a backbone or core. As much as I dislike CIDR by itself, I see no choice at this point of time to move ahead with it as much as we can, even if it causes some pain, or problems will continue, until we find a long term sulution and quit this bickering about the IPng protocol details. Hans-Werner PS: May be Microsoft *should* make the choice for us. Then even Marty gets his clean slate.