Paul writes:
Second, I've seen Karl and now Alan misuse a term. I'll pick on Alan since his
message is right in front of me, but the complaint is general (sorry Alan!):
That was me, actually.
Taking a relatively small chunk of the remaining address space
(say, 210.*.*.*) gives us 64k addresses to hand out in convenientThat's 16M addresses, not 64K addresses. We should not equivocate "addresses"
and "Class C networks". 210.*.*.* has 2^24 (minus subnet zero and broadcast
lossage) addresses -- 16M. 210.*.*.* has 2^16 "Class C networks" -- 64K. We
must not assume that every customer will get a Class C -- many will get just a
subnet since they will only have a handful of hosts. I know of several
providers who are chopping things up on nybble boundaries (16 hosts/net, or
actually 14 with the subnet zero and broadcast taken out).
I slipped. It's 64k class C networks. I know better, but yesterday was
a long day.
If all the router vendors supported nybble-sized routing, things would be
a lot easier for providers. If there was an easy named db syntax to fix
in-addr mapping syntax for nybble-sized routing, things would be a lot
easier for providers. Paul can perhaps fix one of these issues (in his
copious spare time? 8-), the other one is a more general problem.
-george william herbert
gherbert@crl.com