On 2019-07-26 11:01 PM, William Herrin wrote:
"Better investment?" What on earth makes you think it's a zero-sum game?On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 10:36 PM Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us> wrote:Doug,
> So I'll just say this ... if you think that the advice I received from all of the many people I spoke to (all of whom are/were a lot smarter than me on this topic) was wrong, and that putting the same LOE into IPv6 adoption that it would have taken to make Class E usable was a better investment
Because for all of us there are only 24 hours in a day, and the
people who would have needed to do the work to make it happen were
telling me that they were going to put the work into IPv6 instead,
because it has a future. As Owen pointed out, no matter how much
IPv4 space you added, all it would do would be delay the
inevitable.
I don't recall seeing your draft on that .... refresh my memory?"Same level of effort?" A reasonable level of effort was adding the word "unicast" to the word "reserved" in the standards. Seven letters. A space. Maybe a comma.
You give me way too much credit on that. I was the reed tasting the wind on this topic. I was not the wind. I (like every other IANA manager) had exactly zero authority to say, "You SHALL NOT pursue making Class E space usable for anything!" The opportunity existed then, and still exists today, for anyone to make it work.That would have unblocked everybody else to apply however much or little effort they cared to. Here we are nearly 20 years later and had you not fumbled that ball 240/4 might be broadly enough supported to usefully replace the word "reserved" with something else.
You're right about one thing: you won't be able to convince me that your conclusion was rational. No matter how many smart people say a stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing.
So as my last word on the topic, I return you to the point above,
that whatever the discussion was 20 years ago, there is still no
workable solution.
If you'd like another perspective, here is a reasonably good summary:
https://packetlife.net/blog/2010/oct/14/ipv4-exhaustion-what-about-class-e-addresses/
Doug