"Near-perfect example"? I beg to differ. I used to work for a Local
Exchange Carrier.
The telephone number situation in the United States has been one of
continual crisis for years, because of rapid growth in use (in part because
of Internet access!). The area served by a given "area code" would be split
into smaller areas with multiple area codes; these days, those areas aren't
necessarily even contiguous. Moving from seven-digit to (effectively)
ten-digit numbers was difficult, if not impossible, for some older
equipment; sometimes a kludge could be developed to allow the old equipment
to be used for a few more months or years, but often as not new equipment
was required, at considerable cost. It was difficult for end users, too: in
addition to the confusion everyone suffered during the transition (I still
get scads of wrong numbers on my cellphone, because people forget the area
code is needed), businesses had to spend great sums of money to revise their
public appearance (advertising, letterhead, etc.).
And, often as not, we'd do it all over again a few months later.
My point is that ANY numbering scheme is difficult to change, once it's in
place. Someone else on this thread made a good point, however, that the
administration of that scheme can make worlds of difference - this person's
point was about "giveaway" assignment of large portions of the address
space, "because there's so much" -- hm, sounds like the exhaustion of
Earth's natural resources, too. :-) I'd suggest that address assignment
policy should keep process lightweight, so that it is realistic for
businesses to regularly ask for assignments in more granular chunks; rather
than grabbing a class A-size space "just in case", big users would be
willing to request another 256 when the new branch office opens, then
another 64 for the summer interns... and so individuals can easily get
multiple addresses through an ISP.
In fact, it should be as easy as getting a telephone number. -- Ian
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Atkielski [mailto:anthony(_at_)atkielski(_dot_)com]
Sent: Monday, April 24, 2000 3:05 AM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: IPv6: Past mistakes repeated?
[snip]
The only real solution to this is an open-ended addressing
scheme--one to which digits can be added as required. And it just so
happens that a near-perfect example of such a scheme is right
in front of us all, in the form of the telephone system. Telephone
numbers have never had a fixed number of digits. The number
has always been variable, and has simply expanded as needs
have changed
and increased. At one time, a four-digit number was enough
to reach anyone. Then seven-digit numbers became necessary. Then an
area code became necessary. And finally, a country code
became necessary. Perhaps a planet code will be necessary at
some point in
the future. But the key feature of the telephone system is
that nobody ever decided upon a fixed number of digits in the
beginning,
and so there is no insurmountable obstacle to adding digits
forever, if necessary. Imagine what things would be like if
someone had
decided in 1900 that seven digits would be enough for the
whole world, and then equipment around the world were designed only to
handle seven digits, with no room for expansion. What would
happen when it came time to install the 10,000,000th
telephone, or when
careless allocation exhausted the seven-digit space?
[snip]