On Wed, 18 Apr 2001 11:34:57 +0900, Jiwoong Lee
<porce(_at_)n016(_dot_)co(_dot_)kr> said:
What fun! I've heard a lot about IPv5, but it's first time to see IPv9!
It seems that IPv6-IPv9 appeared as solutions to IPv4 address shortcoming,
as indicated IAB Routing and Addressing Task Force. Am I right ?
IPv6 is the currently well-developed candidate. v7, v8, and v9
were basically research efforts that never saw the light of day
(although parts and concepts were incorporated ito IPv6).
It is important to note that v7, v8, and v9 have been used in
contexts *unrelated* to the official assignments. For instance,
IPv7 and IPv8 have *also* been used by Fleming and Terrel for their
addressing architecture, which has never seen much actual deployment.
IPv9 was also used in the context of several April Fool's Day RFCs
(for the non-English speaking, April 1 is a day for pranks and
mischief - anything said by *anybody* on April 1 should be viewed
with caution...).
I see no RFC's referencing IPv, v8, or v9 after June 1994, other than
the IPv9 April 1 RFCs and RFC1752, which basically says 'v7/8/9 will
be abandoned in favor of IPv6'.
Question for the IETF (actually IANA): Are v7/v8/v9 in actual
use anywhere, or should IANA recover those 3 protocol numbers
as 'historic' and re-use them? IP version numbers are even
scarcer than IPv4 /8s - we should conserve them.
For that matter, is anyboy using 'ST Datagram', or is v5 also
recoverable for re-use?
One quick question: Why IPv1-IPv3 left untouched ?
I wasn't there, but I'm willing to bet that v1-v3 were the "Always plan
to throw one away" protocols that didn't work out and were discarded
(although NCP may have been one of them, I don't know).
Valdis Kletnieks
Operating Systems Analyst
Virginia Tech