On Sun, Jul 10, 2005 at 12:38:51PM -1000, Randy Bush wrote:
classically, if they have no plan to be connected, they don't get address space. may have been true when the only network was ARPAnet. with the advent of Internet, if you could demonstrate runing IP you could get addresses (mostly true) remember the "connected/unconnected" database?
nope. sri internet days, netsol address days, ... even today, it says if you will be connecting to the network.
true... but the "network" has changed over time. this i know becuase the commercial US defense contractor that i worked for was not able to join the ARPAnet directly (AUP issues) - we were assigned numbers from the "unconnected" database for oour global network - then the AUP changed and we were connected ... and found that the connected/unconnected databases overlapped ... my task was to renumber 134 sites. Others had similar history.
it even makes sense. if you're not going to be on the internet, why the heck do you need an internet address?
because I'm running IP-based infrastructure.... and (presuming the IPv6-enabled world) there is zero reason to treat addresses as an artifically scarce resource. Routing ... thats something else. Raw addresses - not a scarce resource.
randy