Greg,
> I recall reading somewhere
> that one consideration of @Home's allocation was the contribution of
> Capt. Mike St. Johns to Internet research and development, particularly
> with regards to IP over cable.
Uh, no. This was never (to my knowledge) part of the consideration for the
allocation of the /14 to @Home. What was part of the consideration (according
to Jon Postel when I grilled him over it after the fact) was:
a) @Home was using new (at the time) technology that was not particularly
amenable to dynamic assignment (again, at the time -- the cable modem vendors
were a bit slow to figure out what DHCP meant).
b) @Home was able to provide sufficient documentation in terms of engineering
plans, deployment plans, financial plans, and business plans to convince the
IANA that they were highly likely to consume a /14 allocation within two
years.
c) @Home proposed the establishment of an Internet over cable TV
infrastructure providers interest/trade group that would administer the /8
from which @Home's /14 was allocated.
The sequence of events was:
a) @Home approached InterNIC for an allocation that could not be justified
with the then existing policies, resulting in @Home's request being denied
b) @Home appealed the denial to the IANA, providing justifying documentation
c) The IANA decided to allocate a /8 in preparation of the cable TV trade
group acting as a registry for all cable providers, directing InterNIC to
allocate a /14 from that /8 in the meantime
A few years after the fact, the following can be seen with hindsight:
(a) was specious -- the fact that cable modem providers did not support DHCP
should have been insufficient justification for special treatment.
(b) @Home did indeed consume the entire /14 within a couple of years
(c) the trade group never formed, thus resulting in the IANA acting as the
registry for (some) cable providers. Other cable providers (typically outside
the US) go to the appropriate registry
My personal feeling (both at the time that the IANA made the delegation and
now) was that the 24/8 "cable provider" registry creation was a mistake -- it
creates a special exception based on the technology that is not justifiable
given that technology. Note that I believe this is an issue that is currently
being discussed within the ASO -- join and make your voice heard.
Rgds,
-drc
