On Wed, 17 Jun 2015 18:38:32 -0400, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:
You may be confused. ARIN never possessed class E; it's held in reserve by IETF. As much as I enjoy a good ARIN bashing, they and John Curran are quite faultless here.
Quote-unquote, as in they didn't even bother *even proposing* to use Class E space. The reasons were numerous, btw. (hardcoded restrictions, erroneous classification as multicast, not worth the effort, etc.)
Given how slowly IPv6 is deploying, this choice may prove to have been shortsighted.
I doubt it. As you said, there is A LOT of crap out there that would have to be updated. Pulling a number out of the air, I'd guess *most* in-use devices would NEVER see such an update. Even from companies that do still exist. (Sadly, those are also devices that aren't going to see IPv6, either.)