How then can you justify needing more than a single Class-B, or at most two or three worldwide?
I recall seeing a comment about using the public Internet as private data transfer. Since the smallest prefix you can advertise on the Internet is /24, that breaks up the aforementioned Class B into 256 blocks. Given that GTE (or any large corporation) is likely is divide its remote offices up in headcounts of 254, there's room for inefficiency there. I could easily see a use for _at least_ 4 Class B's, if not more.
Okay... RFC1918 host | | border router <----+ | | | | public internet | | | | | IP tunnel between corporate offices border router | preserving RFC1918 addressing. | | | | RFC1918 host <----+ With carefull use of NAT at appropriate points, it is technically possible to limit the amount of publicly visible addresses you use to (quite conceivably) 2 or 3 traditional class C blocks. Obviously this is not necessarily a real world model but you get the picture. I don't personally believe that an "enterprise" network should ever require more than one (PERHAPS two) /16 networks. When you get to ISPs and similar, the need for addresses will rise dramatically but it can still be kept under control if you're carefull about maintaining hierarchical addressing structures. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wayne Bouchard GlobalCenter web@primenet.com Primenet Network Operations Internet Solutions for (602) 416-6422 800-373-2499 x6422 Growing Businesses FAX: (602) 416-9422 http://www.primenet.com http://www.globalcenter.net ----------------------------------------------------------------------