[arin-ppml] Use of "reserved" address space.

[Leo Bicknell]

A year or two ago there was some discussion about "reserved" address
space.  Specifically, Class E space, but in a CIDR world one has
to wonder why we can't use most of 0/8, 127/8, and 240/4 as regular
unicast space.  There were folks who were going off to discuss that
at the IETF and with some vendors.

That's potentially ~18 /8's worth of address space "left on the
table".  Early review suggested that most of this in several free
operating systems could be enabled with simple "user interface"
changes; that is there were some checks to make sure they weren't
used improperly by tools that set addresses but if those were removed
they would be forwarded and treated like unicast.  That is the cost
of implementation was low.

I realize "everything in the middle" must be upgraded to support this,
but considering the level of effort and cost that may go into transfers
folks may in fact find using this space cheaper.  I'm surprised there
isn't more effort to look into this area.  Is there something going on
I'm just not seeing?

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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