North American Network Operators Group
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How can we provide enough IP address to MAN network

  • From: Yu Ning
  • Date: Mon Jan 01 07:06:02 2001 
Hi nanog,

When we build MAN (Metropolitan Area Network), we're basically enable the ip layer communication
between millions of end system - taking into account the number of family, business building PCs,etc.
Recall the scarcity of IPv4 address, I wonder how this huge ip address demand was met in US ?

In my mind, we have the following choices:
1.  Build the MAN into a private address network, a class A network 10.x.x.x will be sufficient for
     most metropolitan. But the cons is: need PAT/NAT to access public Internet, and that leads to
     the potential performance bottleneck.

2. Just wondering, can we use a distributed DHCP system? In this scenario, we can almost convert
    the address consuming MAN into a 10 to 1 (or 20 to 1) address pool, which achieve nearly the same
    address utilization efficiency of dialup address pool. Cons: don't know the scalability of DHCP, any
    comments?

3. Build the MAN into a IPv6 network, and use address conversion at the interconnection point between
    v4 and v6. Just an idea, feeling that conversion efficiency between v4-v6 should be better than
    NAT/PAT, any support comments?

thanks !
 
Yu Ning 
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(Mr.) Yu Ning, Chief Eng.
Internet Network Product Dep.
Data Com. Bureau, China Telecom
Beijing, P.R.C. +86-10-62072357/54
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