On 03/04/10 23:11 -0700, Vadim Antonov wrote:
With all that bitching about IPv6 how come nobody wrote an RFC for a very simple solution to the IPv4 address exhaustion problem:
+1 years.
Step 1: specify an IP option for extra "low order" bits of source & destination address. Add handling of these to the popular OSes.
+5 years.
Step 2: make NATs which directly connect extended addresses but also NAT them to non-extended external IPs.
Step 3: leave backones unchanged. Gradually reduce size of allocated blocks forcing people to NAT as above.
Never.
Step 4: watch people migrating their apps to extended addresses to avoid dealing with NAT bogosity and resulting tech support calls & costs.
+10 years.
Step 5: remove NATs.
This is a good example of why patching v4 or trying to maintain backwards compatibility is not practical. -- Dan White