On 04/12/2012, at 9:30 AM, Ronald Bonica <[email protected]> wrote:

> Geoff, Randy,
> 
> Having reflected on your comments, I think that the two of you may be 
> approaching the same problem from two directions. I will try my best to 
> articulate the problem. When we agree that we have a common understanding of 
> the problem, we can decide whether to fix draft-bonica or abandon it.
> 
> Geoff points out that each of the entries mentioned in draft-bonica can be 
> characterized as one of the following:
> 
> - a special purpose address assignment
> - a address reservation
> 
> All compliant IP implementations must respect special purpose address 
> assignments. As Randy puts it, special purpose address assignments should be 
> baked into IP stacks. 
> 
> However, the same is not true of address reservations. While operators may 
> afford special treatment to packets that are sourced from or destined to 
> reserved addresses, these treatments should not be baked into IP 
> implementations. They should be configurable.
> 
> Currently, there is nothing in draft-bonica that distinguishes between 
> special purpose address assignments and address reservations. If we were to 
> continue with this draft, we would have to add a field that makes this 
> distinction. Having added that field, we should also make clear that that 
> field, and only that field, determines whether an address should be baked 
> into IP stacks?
> 
> Randy, Geoff, have I restated the problem accurately?
> 


I'd use the opposite terminology. e.g.:

  - I regard 0.0.0.0/8 as a "reservation", and should be baked into IP stacks

  - I regard 192.88.99.0/24 as a "special purpose assignment" and is 
configurable by IP stacks.

In IPv4 my understanding of the current set of "reservations" are:

  0.0.0.0/8
  127.0.0.0/8
  169.254.0.0/16
  224.0.0.0/4
  240.0.0.0/4

All others I would see as being special purpose assignments, given that they do 
not require special baked-in treatment by IP stacks.

My personal preference would be to: 

--  record all special purpose assignments in a special purpose assignment 
registry, such as 
http://www.iana.org/assignments/iana-ipv4-special-registry/iana-ipv4-special-registry.xml
 for Ipv4


-- record all reservations in the address protocol registry, such as 
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xml for 
Ipv4


regards,

   Geoff




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