Re: Sequentially assigned IP addresses--why not?

[Steven M. Bellovin]

In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Cor
zine, Gordie" writes:
>Seriously,
>
>As was pointed out recently, IPV6 will croak much sooner than it needs to
>for the simple reason that we structure routing intelligence into the
>address assignment.
>
>Wouldn't it be better by far, to assign new addresses from 000...1, and map
>to routing information however we may code it?  The memory and processor
>steps required would be trivial compared to the agony of running out of
>space again.

The problem is that we (as a profession) don't know how to do that.  We 
have to make routing scale, and that demands aggregation, which 
in turn demands structured addresses.

Look at it this way.  We have about 75K routes in the "default-free 
zone" now.  If we just assigned addresses sequentially, we'd need a 
route for every endpoint.  There are what, 100,000,000 nodes today, and more 
tomorrow?  We can't handle 3 orders of magnitude increase in the size 
of that table, let alone what it will be in a few years.

There are lots of other practical issues, but that's the big one.

                --Steve Bellovin