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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: that 4byte ASN you were considering...
At 9:44 +0100 10/10/06, [email protected] wrote: It breaks any applications which recognize IP address-like objects by seeing a dot in an otherwise numeric token. I can't believe grown engineers are afraid of a dot. We all know that the Internet is awash in homegrown scripts written in PERL or TCL or bash or Ruby or Python. It is likely I find that more of a reason to do a change than to leave well enough alone. What's gonna happen when all of the current generation (the writers of the scripts) retire and close the door on their careers? How will the Internet live on? Shouldn't a technical beast be able to thrive on technical changes? But that question isn't germane to the issue at hand. The real question is what does the notation 1.0 add that the notation 65536 does not provide? Fair enough - my answer is it provides the same as the dotted quad for IP, it makes it easier for human to human conveyance. It also makes the transition from 2 byte to 4 byte more obvious in the interim. If the IETF had really wanted to create a universal notation The IETF "really" doesn't "want to create" anything. The IETF is just a forum where folks can gather to discuss an issue like this. (Pardon my second non-germane comment on this thread.) When IP addresses were created, it was important to indicate the boundaries between the network number and the host address. Originally, the periods represented this boundary for the three classes of IP address, class A, class B and class C. Long ago, we removed this classfulness attribute, but the notation remains because lots of applications expect this notation. So why on earth are we changing AS number notation today? For the same reason - to distinguish the boundaries between what the old engineers know from what the future young engineers will take for granted. The dot would outlast the old engineers just as the dotted quad persists into the CIDR age. "Why on earth?" Because there aren't [m]any IP addresses on the moon. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Edward Lewis +1-571-434-5468 NeuStar Secrets of Success #107: Why arrive at 7am for the good parking space? Come in at 11am while the early birds drive out to lunch.
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