North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: Whoa; the 3 network?

  • From: Wayne Bouchard
  • Date: Tue Dec 23 22:58:30 1997

> > How then can you justify needing more than a single Class-B, or at most two
> > or three worldwide?  
> 
> 
> I recall seeing a comment about using the public Internet as private data 
> transfer.  Since the smallest prefix you can advertise on the Internet is /24,
> that breaks up the aforementioned Class B into 256 blocks.  Given that GTE 
> (or any large corporation) is likely is divide its remote offices up in 
> headcounts of 254, there's room for inefficiency there.  I could easily see
> a use for _at least_ 4 Class B's, if not more.

Okay...

RFC1918 host
  |
  |
border router  <----+
  |                 |
  |                 |
public internet     |
  |                 |
  |                 |  IP tunnel between corporate offices
border router       |  preserving RFC1918 addressing.
  |                 |
  |                 |
RFC1918 host   <----+

With carefull use of NAT at appropriate points, it is technically
possible to limit the amount of publicly visible addresses you use to
(quite conceivably) 2 or 3 traditional class C blocks. Obviously this
is not necessarily a real world model but you get the picture. I don't
personally believe that an "enterprise" network should ever require
more than one (PERHAPS two) /16 networks. When you get to ISPs and
similar, the need for addresses will rise dramatically but it can
still be kept under control if you're carefull about maintaining
hierarchical addressing structures.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wayne Bouchard                             GlobalCenter
[email protected]                           
Primenet Network Operations                Internet Solutions for
(602) 416-6422   800-373-2499 x6422        Growing Businesses
FAX: (602) 416-9422
http://www.primenet.com                    http://www.globalcenter.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------