At 06:08 PM 4/28/2003, Temkin, David wrote:
And something else a lot of people tend to forget - just because space isn't in the tables doesn't mean it's not in use.
There are companies that connect to thousands of other companies (see the financial markets) that require unique addressing between companies with non-colliding address ranges. 10.x.x.x doesn't quite cut it.
Which gets us back to a very basic issue. Are the RIRs, and ARIN for that matter handing out numbers for use on the public Internet, or are they handing out numbers for use with the Internet Protocol? Use of the Internet Protocol extends far beyond the public, routable Internet. Such use is fair, reasonable and from the earliest days was not only permitted, but encouraged. Companies are able to register well known port numbers even if the applications associated are never used on the public Internet. Is that sensible? I'd argue it is. Addresses are just one more data item used by the Internet Protocol. Dan