[ppml] 240/4

[Paul Wilson]

Tony,

The suggestion was to use the space for private use, not for global 
unicast.  The critical difference in private networks is that the operators 
can be expected to know what gear they have and exactly what needs to be 
upgraded, and also that the impacts of any problems are localised.  Many 
such network deployments could occur independently and in parallel without 
impact on the rest of the network.

A lot of legacy equipment may well be hard to upgrade, but a lot of new 
services these days are being developed or planned using new technologies 
that should be much more amenable to upgrade (set top boxes, VOIP gear, 
appliances etc).

My other comment in today's session was that I was told last year of a 
planned national telco network deployment which would require 8 /8 blocks 
within the space of 2 or 3 years.  The operator in that case would have 
been happy with private space, if there was enough of it.

The cost of redesignating the class E address space seems very low, and 
without any downside, for the potential benefits which could occur (even if 
used by only a handful of networks which would otherwise ask for IPv4 
public addresses).

Paul


--On Tuesday, 24 April 2007 12:03 PM -0700 Tony Hain <alh-ietf at tndh.net> 
wrote:

> I just heard a part of Paul's comment about 240/4, and it sounded like
> Scott commented about implementations being difficult to fix.
>
> Even if the vendors implemented a change and shipped it within 18 months
> (an aggressive window), there is a very, very, very large installed base
> of systems that can't/won't be upgraded to allow use of a block that was
> 'undefined' at the time they were tested & shipped. By the time those work
> their way out of the network, we will be long past the point where the
> 240/4 block might have been useful.
>
> Tony
>
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