Date: Wed, 05 Feb 92 02:43:57 EST From: mathis@pele.psc.edu It is clear to me that one of two things is going to happen: The rules will change, and there will be good technical solutions. -or- The rules will not change, and we will have split research and commercial networks with weak interconnects. Organizations that really need to function in both worlds will have two network numbers or two connections.... Good assesment. One thing that I have noticed in life, people don't always see their way clear to perform preventative measures (oh, money is too tight, I don't have time, etc.) but they sure scream when the damned thing breaks. Perhaps we ought to start encouraging companies to start requesting more than one network number: one for RE and one for non-RE (I would rather we quit calling the non-RE thing "CO" since not all non-RE stuff is commercial). This will cause the usage of network numbers to increase dramatically, hastening the time that we run out of address space. This would break things very quickly. Maybe the hue and cry would convince the powers-that-be that things ought to change. It would really be a shame to be forced to break the very thing many have spent significant parts of their life to build just so we could get it fixed. Brian Lloyd, WB6RQN Lloyd & Associates Principal and Network Architect 3420 Sudbury Road brian@lloyd.com Cameron Park, CA 95682 voice (916) 676-1147 -or- (415) 725-1392