Noel, I see that you copied all of the lists. In my original posting to them I requested that discussion move to the cidrd mailing list. Folks should send to majordomo@iepg.org and have subscribe cidrd in the body. I request that you and other responders follow up to cidrd (after reading my retort...) In reply to your message stating:

addressing. It then, incorrectly, asserts that the Internet topology

Well, in fact it says that "the topology of the network is not strictly

The statement in the ownership draft you quote is an afterthought completely offset by the bulk of the draft. My comments draft mentions that quote (and dismisses it.) Please re-read both documents more carefully.

You appear to have missed the distinction between a hierarchical topology, and an address hierarchy. One can apply hierarchical addressing to a perfectly

No, that's exactly what CIDR has gotten wrong. It uses an imaginary topological hierarchy to define the address hierarchy. As a result of this confusion it handles multi-homing in a fashion which does not scale and which requires users and intermediate providers to renumber every time they change suppliers. How would YOU like to change phone numbers every time you change long-distance carriers?

The point remains that use of hierarchical addressing is the *only* way known

Noel, I LIKE hierarchical addressing. The problem is with the current choice of hierarchy made by cidr.

that an addressing hierarchy that is loosely isomorphic to the connectivity

Too loose for comfort, Noel. Our pants are starting to fall down.

Renumbering is indeed painful. However, given past decisions, no other option

CIDR was chosen, yes. Consideration of alternatives was terminated. After initial success, CIDR is now failing. The Leasing proposal is part of an effort to save cidr, but at the expense of intolerable effects on much/most of the Internet's participants. Time to review the alternatives. Multi-homing and renumbering issues make cidr just as experimental as the alternatives. Hmmm. Perhaps not. We KNOW cidr has show-stopping problems.

It is time to consider alternatives to CIDR.

Unfortunately, it's too late to consider alternatives. The Internet has a real problem with routing table growth. To get something organized (since the

Noel, this was the claim 3 years ago, too. It's time to stop letting that line of crisis abuse be used on the community. We need to focus on finding a mechanism that works.

After some considerable initial success it is proving inadequate.

No, it's perfectly adequate, just painful. However, no other tool is available

The effect of the requirement for large-scale and REPEATED renumbering is considerably worse than just painful. The failure to handle large-scale multi-homing is considerably worse than just painful. d/ -------------------- Dave Crocker +1 408 246 8253 Brandenburg Consulting fax: +1 408 249 6205 675 Spruce Dr. page: +1 408 581 1174 Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA dcrocker@brandenburg.com