On Fri, 07 Jan 2011 07:11:42 -0500 "Robert E. Seastrom" <rs@seastrom.com> wrote:
"Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net> writes:
The next ship will be departing in a hundred years or so, advance registration for the IPv7 design committee are available over there.
Sorry, but IPv7 has come and gone. It was assigned to the TUBA proposal, basically replacing IP with CLNP. IPv8 has also been assigned. (Don't ask as it involved he who must not be named.)
In the grand tradition of list pedantry, I must correct both of these statements. :-)
IPv7 was TP/IX, which I never really learned anything about (at least nothing that I can remember) at the time.
IPv8 was PIP, which got merged with SIP to form SIPP which as I recall evolved into IPv6. It had nothing to do with he who must not be named, but you can't figure this out by googling IPv8 as all it returns is a series of links to flights of fancy.
IPv9 was TUBA. Went down for political reasons, but in retrospect perhaps wouldn't have been such a bad thing compred to the "second system syndrome" design that we find ourselves with today (I know I'm gonna take it on the chin for making such a comment, but whatever).
10-14 are unassigned, guess we'd better get crackin, eh?
If you define a new protocol version as one that means devices with older protocol generations of firmware/software may not interoperate reliably with devices with new protocol generations of firmware/software, then IPv4 as we know it today is probably at least "IPv7" - address classes was a generational change requiring software/firmware updates (compare addressing in rfc760 verses rfc791), as was classful+subnets and then CIDR. Regards, Mark.