[ppml] IANA is dead!?

[Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]

>An interesting application ... however forgive me for being ignorant but
>could this not be done by using the 10.x.x.x space and a physically
>private network - as you indicated, your networks are not connected to 
the
>Internet anyhow,

As I said this is an industry, i.e. thousands of independent companies and 
organizations. Many of them already use RFC 1918 addresses in their own 
private networks. However, because the industry is built entirely on the 
notion of transactions between two or more organizations, there is a need 
for internetworking. These internets may not be *THE* Internet, but they 
are still internets and they need globally unique IP addresses to 
function. In almost every case, the organizations in the industry have 
internal networks that connect to both the public Internet and to multiple 
private internetworks. The trend is to reduce the number of private 
internetworks which means that these internets are becoming larger and 
more similar in character to the Internet.

>If and when your
>private network needs to connect to the "real interent", presumably you
>could employ secure gateways or border routers, or some form of VPN 
maybe?

These industry internets already use many forms of secure gateways, NAT, 
VPNs etc, much like the public Internet. But that doesn't make it possible 
to go very far reusing the same small blocks of RFC 1918 addresses over 
and over again.

--Michael Dillon