[ On Thursday, March 15, 2001 at 17:09:14 (-0600), Stephen Sprunk wrote: ]
Subject: Re: Broken Internet?
Renumbering PCs is a trivial task. Reconfiguring hundreds (or thousands) of routers, firewalls, etc. to account for the moved PCs is not trivial. Renumbering servers is not trivial.
For _small_ networks (where this discussion started) even manual reconfiguration of all the hosts (including servers) in an office, on a floor, or even in a small building, would take less time than this discussion has gone on for!
Keep in mind that Fortune 100 companies with multiple DS3s in several US locations are in the same boat wrt renumbering. Most don't qualify for portable addresses by ARIN's rules.
In essence all that matters are the public servers and hosts. In theory none of an organisations internal network will be affected in any way by renumbering or multi-homing issues. ARIN's rules are just fine no matter how big your internal network is. If you're running multiple high-speed connections in multiple locations then your organisation should have the skill set necessary (or the ability to hire it) to manage renumbering any given location on demand. If you're doing stupid things and putting private internal hosts on public networks then you're asking for all kinds of troubles, not just renumbering and multi-homing issues.
Also, try convincing someone like AmEx or Citibank that they should put their servers under someone else's physical control -- that'll be good for a laugh. Sure, that's extreme, but where exactly do you draw the line on who's "important" enough to host their own servers?
This isn't about telling people whether they're allowed to host their own servers or not -- that's irrelevant. Everyone's completely free to make whatever choice they find most suitable for their circumstances (though often the average person will make drastically wrong risk assessments surrounding these issues and will thus inevitably make the wrong decision). -- Greg A. Woods +1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@acm.org> <robohack!woods> Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>