I've just set up a vpn tunnel to Amazon's AWS and as part of the config they required me to configure to /30 tunnels using addressing from the 169.254.0.0/16 space.
RFC3927 basically says that this address should only be used as a temp measure until the interface has a proper private or public address.
So what's the consensus then? Is their a problem using this space as link-local address for routers here and there (I mean we have 65K addresses wasted in this block) or is it a strict no-no? And if no, why is Amazon using it? Given the frequency with which adhoc networks are numbered out of this
On 10/17/12 10:59 AM, Darren O'Connor wrote: prefix, it's existence is far from wasted. The term waste is exercised far to liberally in the context of address mangement as far as I'm concerned. If you are unconcerned with possible collisions with ephemeral uses of this space then I imagine you could reuse it for some internal purpose. It is probably important to be aware that unmanaged end systems will use it in an uncoordinated fashion (and make assumptions about the scope of addresses in that range) and that it would therefore be a good idea to limit applications to those which cannot be impacted by that behavior. Amazon does number our VPC peer links out of there. coordinating the existance of multiple private clouds all numbered out of potentially overlapping rfc-1918 address space is probably the motivation for doing so.
Thanks
Darren