On Thu, Sep 11, 1997 at 01:01:45PM -0700, Michael Dillon wrote:
At 2:02 PM -0400 9/11/97, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
On Wed, Sep 10, 1997 at 09:11:55PM -0400, Sean M. Doran wrote:
Sanjay Dani <sanjay@professionals.com> writes:
There are backbone providers and there are providers of specialized ISP or hosting or security etc. services that need independent* IP address space and do not have to waste resources on building a private "backbone".
NAT.
Perhaps I misunderstood Sanjay, Sean, but I believe his concern was that the addresses _not be the property of an upstream (ie: backbone) provider_ to provide flexibility of connection choice.
NAT will not solve this problem; it resides at too low a level of the theoretical architecture, being used primarily to avoid renumbering of internetworks. This isn't a network numbering problem, it's a routing problem.
Please, let's think this through carefully before making such pronouncements. If the problem to be solved is providing flexibility of choice, then Sean is quite right and NAT (plus other renumbering technologies) is the solution for most people. If you use NAT and renumbering technologies then you don't give a darn what your IP address is or who gave it to you as long as it is globally routable. You still have flexibility of choice in that you can switch upstream providers on a whim and use Paul Vixie's BSD tricks to multihome if that matters.
Ok; I've taken this private, because I'm only close to getting what you're saying, and my feet are too big. [ reads, thinks, chnages mind ] Oh. Shit. <thunk> Number the internal stuff privately and use NAT to renumber the external appearances when necessary. Fix the DNS when you do. Forgive me, all; I'm climbing back under my rock now. Cheers, -- jr '/24' a -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "People propose, science studies, technology Tampa Bay, Florida conforms." -- Dr. Don Norman +1 813 790 7592