Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 21:56:02 +1000
From: George Michaelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
| But like I said, the current experience shows that excluding routability
| we KNOW we can use a unitary-rooted process to divide the number field
| into disjoint pools to allocate from.
Of course we can, that we can do that isn't the question. The question
here is why I, as a customer, would go pay you 10 Euros for a number
allocated this way, when "Joe's cheap numbers" is selling them at 1000
for 1 Euro ? What is special about a number allocated by the "blessed
agency" in the case we're discussing?
| numbers have properties. exclude ordering, or any properties on the
| bitmask and apart from uniqueness, there isn't much left.
The only property that actually matters to the numbers in question,
the only one that the vast majority of people will ever care about,
is that it is N bits (for some N not yet fully decided, nor does it
matter much what N it is).
Nothing else really matters for most organisations. Uniqueness is
irrelevant for all but a few, and even those few only really need
the number to be unique among their peers (and perhaps their peers)
that is, perhaps a few thousand sites, maybe 100K, which a random
number in a large enough N bits will almost certainly provide.
Don't misunderstand me, I'd like and prefer unique numbers. But I
won't be a party to telling people that's what we're providing, unless
we really are providing numbers that are unique (with at least a very
high degree of confidence). For a "central allocation" method of making
them unique, that means we need a high degree of confidence that the
one central authority is the only one that can ever exist (there needs
to be a reason for that).
| But the property of uniqueness is preserved, if the processes followed in
| allocation preserve the same behaviours, of making <n> RIR look like one
| functional body, in as much as a shared pool is allocated with (at least)
| one useful condition: ie uniqueness.
George, I know it can be done. The question is why anyone would bother
to do it - or more correctly, why *everyone* would bother to do it.
All it takes is one exception, and uniqueness is gone.
| If I heard the sense of the room right at the last two sessions
| of IPNG-like discussions at IETF right, people want to be able to know that
| their non-routed addresses aren't masking somebody elses routables,
Yes, of course, that's important. But all that takes (and what these
various slightly different proposals all provide) is a common prefix
that says "no routable addresses in this block". So, you can take
that as a given. My non-routable address doesn't need to differ from
your non-routable address for this to work, unless we happen to want to
use them to communicate.
| > The question is why does anyone want that? What's it useful for?
| Peace of mind.
But from where does that come, when you know that anyuone else who likes
can simply use the same number you are using, accidentally, or maliciously,
and not suffer at all because of that (nor for that matter, do you suffer).
| Plus, the ability to defer a decision to change ones mind later on.
Change one's mind about what?
kre
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