I've got to agree with Brian, especially in an ISP environment, why would anyone hire or keep someone who couldn't grasp the concept of CIDR? You certainly wouldn't want to have them maintaining a core router with lots of v4 routes, since router-router links are almost always numbered in subnets as small as logic dictates. On 10/16/2009 01:58 PM, Brian Johnson wrote:
I actually think that CIDR is easier to understand than classful addressing. Do the subject completely in binary. It makes complete sense then.
- Brian
BTW: If the grad students don't get it, fail them! I don't want an engineer who can't grasp basic binary math.
-----Original Message----- From: Daniel Golding [mailto:dgolding@t1r.com] Sent: Friday, October 16, 2009 3:51 PM To: Joe Abley Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: ISP customer assignments
The big problem here is that CIDR is tough to teach, even to engineering students. This seems bizarre and counterintuitive, but its true. I know this because I've done it. Its really easy to teach classful addressing, on the other hand. Other problems include the issue that many of the folks teaching have never had to use CIDR in real life, textbook age, and, in some cases, lack of mathematical preparation and inclination on the part of students.
Scarier: I was teaching graduate students.
- Dan
-- Walter Keen Network Technician Rainier Connect (o) 360-832-4024 (c) 253-302-0194