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

[Benson Schliesser]

I think the impact on end hosts would be painful.  Just because my
Linux laptop doesn't mind (thanks to a kernel hack), it doesn't mean
the world's web servers etc. are ok...  Getting universal support for
unicast use of Reserved space is roughly on-scale with the challenges
of deploying IPv6.

However, I've heard reasonable suggestions that reserved space might
be useful for network infrastructure especially in the context of
Locator / ID split proposals i.e as locator space.

Cheers,
-Benson


On 2010-06-25, Leo Bicknell <bicknell at ufp.org> wrote:
>
> 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/
>