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Re: Consensus Call: draft-weil-shared-transition-space-request

2011-12-04 21:10:32
I've seen many enterprise customers using RFC 1918 address space internally.  
This includes allocating 10/8 addresses for hosts, and 172.16/12 for isolated 
segments behind firewalls.  Since 192.168/16 may be used by employees in their 
homes accessing the corpnet, often this block is avoided for use in address 
allocation on VPN servers.  

In terms of NAT usage in enterprise, it is very common: in branches, employee 
homes, campuses, even in data center load balancers (reverse NAT).  It is quite 
common to see RFC 1918 space of all types in enterprise routing tables. Given 
the huge influx of mobile devices (many of which do not support IPv6 fully), 
there will be even more pressure to deploy RFC 1918 addresses and more 
efficiently use routable address space.

In general, enterprise addressing plans are developed and changed deliberately 
and with considerable planning. Where things become more tricky is in Extranet 
design where connections can be made to partners with their own addressing 
complexities.  To avoid routing issues fire gaping may be required. 





On Dec 4, 2011, at 21:24, "Pete Resnick" <presnick(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com> 
wrote:

On 12/4/11 8:22 AM, Hadriel Kaplan wrote:

So you tell me how safe picking a specific RFC 1918 address space is.  There 
are ~100,000 enterprises with over 100 employees just in the US, and ~20,000 
with over 500 employees in the US.  Obviously my company is a tech company 
so it's probably not "normal", but still it seems obvious enterprises use 
random 10.x.x.x and 172.16/12.
  

AFAICT, it *isn't* safe to use these addresses if and only if these 
enterprises *also* use equipment that can't deal with 1918 addresses on their 
external interface. For example, your machine taking a 10.2xx.xxx.xxx address 
isn't a problem in and of itself because the NAT in front of you is 
translating. The issue only arises if the Carrier Grade NAT in front of you 
is on the other side of equipment that *can't* handle that portion of address 
space on the outside.

Now, I don't know if that means it *is* safe. I don't know how many 
enterprises talk to CGNs and wouldn't be able to deal with a particular block 
of 1918 addresses on the outside. That's the question I'd really like an 
answer....

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