Iljitsch,
My comfort level would be much higher if by the time that we need the
extra address space, we have a fighting chance of actually being able to
use it. So I think it would be a good idea to make it very clear that
implementations must, in the absence of more specific information, regard
class E space as regular unicast space, the same way the IPv6 addressing
RFCs spell this out for IPv6 address space that hasn't received a specific
purpose yet. If we do this now we have ten years or more to clean up
implementations.
The only way to make this happen would be to start assigning them to some
real users. Otherwise, the bugs will not be found, reported, and
fixed. Just publishing an RFC with a MUST in it won't be sufficient.
The challenge here is that there may be a lot of IPv4 implementations may
have little or any support, and may not be possible to upgrade. This would
put anyone receiving a Class-E address at a big disadvantage. These
addresses might have to be used behind a NAT to be useful (i.e., allow
direct communication to the rest of the Internet) and this, of course,
defeats the purpose of using them in the first place.
Bob
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