[ppml] [address-policy-wg] Those pesky ULAs again

[David Williamson]

On Tue, May 29, 2007 at 11:04:32AM -0400, Kevin Loch wrote:
> Leo Bicknell wrote:
> 
> > - IPv6 space is not infinite.  It's a 64-72 bit address space.  That's
> >   right, subnets with > 256 hosts are very uncommon today, so we've wasted
> >   64 bits to number 256 things.  That makes the space effectively on the
> >   long end 72 bits.
> 
> Excellent point.  I never understood why they didn't just use say 16
> bits for the host portion, randomly assign an address and check for 
> collisions before use.

Good question.  Appletalk "just worked" under most conditions, and it
worked this way, although in a smaller address space.  It was never
designed as a viable global network protocol, mostly due to lack of
address space, but also due to it's internal limits in scaling
routing.

Golly, IPv6 is just like that, but without the lack of space!  Routing's
still broken, and hacks like ULA-C certainly aren't helping.

-David