> Am I the only one that finds the term "private > interconnect" somewhat specious? As in, if people > make larger x-realm internets by plumbing their > own wires instead of through an ISP, why should > that be thought of differently than the Internet?
even though filtering and policy exists on links in both portions of the network, in the public world the intention is to provide (near) complete interconnection (though some may get better links than others), whereas between private networks the intention is to permit interconnection only between some sets of addresses and prevent it in others. anyway, it seems useful to recognize that the difference exists, and to have shorthand terms to distinguish the different kinds of IP networks. whether such private networks are part of the "Internet" is an ancient debate, and probably not worth revisiting. pragmatically we expect the same IP routers, hosts and applications to run in both kinds of network. Keith -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPng Working Group Mailing List IPng Home Page: http://playground.sun.com/ipng FTP archive: ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng Direct all administrative requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------
