At 02:36 PM 12/2/1999 , Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>Brian E Carpenter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > "running out of addresses". My personal opinion is that we ran out
> > of addresses in practical terms around about when RFC 1597 was published.
>
>I hate to start a flame war, but Brian is absolutely right. I have
>clients spending gargantuan amounts of money dealing with layer upon
Folks might recall that, back then, there were nicely elaborate
calculations put forward, about the date that we would "run out" of
addresses. The methodology for the calculations was highly flawed, but
responses to concern about the methodology was that the numbers were
"interesting".
The methodology tried to use calculations which did not adequately provide
for the increased rate of growth that we were just starting to see.
Worse was with the definition of "running out". Discussion focused on "no
more addresses available" rather than "a network administrator is not able
to get a reasonable block allocation". The latter forced us into NATs. As
Brian notes, we really "ran out" a long, long time ago.
This history is worth considering not as sour grapes but to ask whether
there is some way to get better planning discussions within the IETF. We
can't expect to anticipate all requirements. However some shout loudly
ahead of time. The IAB did, after all, try to get a larger address space
pursued quite awhile ago.
It would be nice to avoid these kinds of problems, in the first place,
rather than having to dig ourselves out from under them, later.
d/
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Dave Crocker Brandenburg Consulting
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