Gotta deal with it in a historical perspective as well. GE has had IP space
almost since the epoch. Much of their network dates from well before well
understood subnetting. Heck some of it dates back to the time of the IMP.
(Think about every network you've ever inherited...None of them were ever
'right' were they? Now picture one 20+ years in the evolutionary making.)
No reason it could not be further optimized, but renumbering hundreds of
thousands of machines is not a trivial exercise. And we are talking about >
10^6 machines. Research & Development, a site I formerly worked at, was
well over 2K machines alone. 1000 sites with 100 machines is not
unimaginable.
Toss in subnetting and the fact that, as I recall, there is little central
administration of the space, and it becomes a non-trivial issue to
re-address it all. GE certainly isn't the only /8 holder out there, nor are
they the only one with this kind of problem. I think there are a lot more
wasted /16's out there than we may realize, particularly with corporate
consolidation being what it is. I can think of several folks with 3 or more
/16's resulting from corporate consolidation, all of which could be
consolidated into one, but the pain of doing so is high compared to the
pain of hiding or refusing to deal with the problem. You gonna move folks
with a carrot or a stick?
But it's probably time to remove this thread from NANOG.
Bob