On Aug 19, 2010, at 3:07 PM, Thomas Narten wrote: > Brian E Carpenter <[email protected]> writes: > >> Jared, > >> On 2010-08-16 13:06, Jared Mauch wrote: >> ... > >>> Is there a legitimate operational reason a host should not know >>> the subnet length it sits on? > > A host should not be *required* to know the subnet length. Very > simple devices may have "simple" stacks. And indeed, for a simply > host, all you need to know is a first hop router address. Redirects > can do the rest.
If they can't handle to know an extra byte (mask) plus 128 bits for 'default' gateway, I certainly understand small embedded solutions having limited space but implementing the redirect codebase, aging, etc.. seems like a lot more effort than knowing a mask and default gateway. > This may not be the ideal situation, but it is one the architecure > allows for. Just because something is 'allowed' does not mean it should be encouraged. I could announce vanity information in AS_PATH, but it's certainly not encouraged. > It is also fine for more sophisticated implementations to know what > the subnet length is. - Jared -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPv6 working group mailing list [email protected] Administrative Requests: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipv6 --------------------------------------------------------------------
