a clever router/switch could certainly do a lot without subnetting.
Indeed. If you Google around a bit for "MAC table size", I think that
you'll find it hard to find an advertised size less than 1K entries,
and that's
for a shrink-wrapped 8 port switch.
I'll believe that entry level boxes are smaller than that, but then
once you
have more than a handful of systems, it would not be unreasonable
to invest a teeny amount in a better switch.
Just how big is your house/////TARDIS anyway?
one of the areas in which I think the IPv4 design failed is that it
didn't really follow the catenet model. it was not possible to extend
the network from any point. and this is part of what led to NATs,
because there really was a need to be able to do that. IPv6 doesn't
quite let you do that either, but having long addresses is probably
"good enough" provided the prefixes given to supposed "end users" are
still long enough to allow a couple of additional layers of network to
be hung off of them.
The only way to do what you want is to effectively have a variable
length address. While there were a few crazy advocates of this many
years ago, they were shouted down.
Tony Li
Lead Lunatic
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