--On Friday, 10 October, 2003 21:51 -0400 Keith Moore
<moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> wrote:
In other words, what happened to the old IETF that would have
said "Site local addresses are utterly stupid and wrong; how
large a block did you say you wanted?"
It went away with the old Internet that was mostly an
experiment and research tool used by a relatively small, elite
group with largely common interests, and a fairly high overall
clue level (as compared to today), to support a relatively
small set of apps.
Keith, I don't understand what you are saying here. As I read
his note, Vernon isn't saying "make all the applications
recognize a particular address range and do something special".
He is saying "ok, we don't think this is useful, but, if it
would help you to have an address range to do your own thing in
your own way, addresses are just not that scarce".
I'd love to stamp out all of the wrong-headedness and stupidity
in the world, but I would not expect to succeed and have largely
given up trying except for isolated local cases. Efforts
through the centuries to make and enforce laws against stupidity
and stupid behavior have not been very successful. I'm not as
convinced as you are that, to use Vernon's description, "Site
local addresses are utterly stupid and wrong", but, even if I
were, I'd be having some trouble convincing myself that taking
the relevant address range out of the allocation pool and
leaving it out would be seriously harmful to the network and to
interoperability.
john