Re: Variable length internet addresses in TCP/IP: history

On 15-Feb-12 08:42, Dave CROCKER wrote:
> As I recall, there was essentially no experience with variable length
> addresses -- and certainly no production experience -- then or even by
> the early 90s, when essentially the same decision was made and for
> essentially the same reason.[1]
>
> It's not that variable length addressing is a bad idea; it's that it
> didn't get the research work and specification detail it needed, for
> introduction into what had become critical infrastructure.  What I
> recall during the IPng discussions of the early 90s was promotion of
> the /concept/ of variable length addressing but without the
> experiential base to provide assurance we knew how it would operate.
The problem with variable-length addressing that, in practice, one needs
to specify a maximum length.  The result, therefore, is that you don't
have variable-length addresses at all but rather fixed-length addresses
with a shorthand encoding for unused bits.

S

-- 
Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
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