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IETF draft on different IPv4 addressing scheme
skuzbunny writes "The IETF [?] draft The Mathematical Reality of IP Addressing in IPv4 Questions
the need for Another IP System of Addressing has some really interesting comments on IPv6 [?] . Quote: "I was indeed successful in the
elimination of the problems associated with IP Address Flooding
inherent in IPv4 and the complexities of IPv6. In short, small
business and single family dwellings can now have the option of
having their own private IP Addressing Scheme," " Interesting, particularly if I understand the math correctly. Can anyone who's actually qualified to comment on this comment below?
First lets consider this:
All gripes about the poor writing style aside, this comes across as mostly non-sense. He's missed the point of classing: a Class A address has a netmask of 255.0.0.0, that means that if you take 100.x.x.x as a class A address, then 100.2.0.30 is under that, and you can't use 255.255.0.0 and say oh, I have 100.2.0.30 and its on a different network...no, it isn't because its still in the orignal class A subnet.
Now, take the obvious fact, that reguardless of what is done, at some point we will *HAVE* to go to a new ip scheme anyhow. This is simply a poorly planned idea to delay the inevitable. My advice: Everyone start learning IPv6 and how it works, so that 20 years from now when we're doing this again, I don't have to read another article this poorly thought out.
The server seems to be a bit /.ed at the moment, so I haven't read the whole thing. I don't think there's any maths in the first few hundred lines though. In my experience you can tell a reasonable proof even if the language is poor. I couldn't see any coherent logic flow here.
I couldn't stand reading the whole thing, but here's what I got out of it: He's saying that first, Class D and E aren't being used, and we could simply use those addresses. It's actually not a bad idea. His second idea is idiotic. He's saying that the binary addresses don't need to be 8-bits. Right now, every address is 8-bits, even if the address is 32.32.32.32 (0001 0000.0001 0000.0001 0000.0001 0000 in binary) He's saying there's an alternate address of 10000.10000.10000.10000. Unfortunately, we'd have to re-write how TCP/IP works in order to do that (so why not just implement IPv6 is my question). If you didn't update, you'd choke when trying to get to the binary 10000.10000.10000.10000 website.
Winners tell stories while losers yell deal.
I wish it was so.
/8
:-)
Cisco pretends to do this, but is not entirely successful. When setting up a router for the first time, you still have to figure out which network class your IP network is, and subtract subnet bits from that. (If you use the setup dialogue. It saves time otherwise)
ie. Subnet bits: 8 != cidr
This can sometimes be annoying. (every time I forget, it's annoying.
We still use CIDR for anything else, including IP address delegation for the customers of the company where I work.
Oh, well.
SSM - Stig Sandbeck Mathisen Trust the Computer, the Computer is your Friend
This is definitely a joke..
He mentions Einstein and Newton.... presumably elevating himself to their level.....
In his references, he lists another paper he wrote by the title of "The Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem"
Here is his first sentence:
"This paper was necessitated by an overwhelming desire; an attempt to end the apparent disparity in the dissemination of information absent of the logical and thoroughness in rendering an explanation of the IP Addressing Scheme."
I _think_ that this is a rough translation:
"I wrote this paper because I found all existing descriptions of the IP Addressing Scheme to be inadequate."
I suggest that either Mr. Terrell has ensnared us in some rather bizzare joke, or that English is not a language he has ever learned.
I honestly don't know whether to vote for the former or the latter.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
This really improves the spelling too!
ABSTRACT:
http://babelfish.altavista.com/cgi-bin/translat
The fact that you can't subdivide gold beyond the atom level has nothing to do with the axiom of choice. I could challenge you to carve a Mandelbrot set out of gold, and you couldn't do that, for the same reason: atoms provide a maximum resolution.
The axiom of choice is only required to distinguish between some of the things that atomic structure prevents you carving out of gold, and other things that atomic structure prevents you carving out of gold. It isn't that the AoC is inapplicable to real life in this instance: it's that real life doesn't let you get as far as the point where you find out whether you can apply the AoC in practice or not.
The AoC deals with uncountable things, but that isn't why it gets bad press as an axiom: lots of Cantor's stuff is far more widely accepted than the AoC even though it deals with uncountable things at least as much.
Mathematical pedantry over. Sorry.
There should be a best of /. award for this !! Were I am a moderator (of course) this would off the real number scale be.
"I believe the children are our future: nasty, brutish and short."
Hmm actually, in a class B it would be (256 * 256) - 2. You _can_ have 'all zeroes' or 'all ones' in the final _octet_, as long as the local IP space in its entirety doesn't contain 'all zeroes' or 'all ones'.
e.g.
192.168.0.[1-255] are all valid
192.168.[1-254].x are all valid
192.168.255.[0-254] are all valid
Thus, the only addresses which aren't valid in this instance are 192.168.0.0 and 192.168.255.255.
(I think this is buried somewhere in RFC1812.)
"What do you want to boot today?"
--
"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
What if the masquerading machine fails?
Masquerading introduces a single point of failure, as there is no way to balance the load between different masquerading servers. Since every node uses the masquerading machine's IP-address, you can't tell it to switch to another machine without losing all established connections. The only solution is to use different subnets with different masquerading gateways, so only half of your network loses its net-connection when a masquerading machine goes down.
And if that's not enough addressing for you, you can run IP masquerading on each machine of your internal network, increasing the layers indefinately.
It doesn't make any sense to masquerade as a private IP. Just use a private class A network.
IPv6 is way too scary to actually work :)
Scary? It's actually ment to be invisible :-)
> ummm....fermat's last theorem has been proven.
Yes.
Which is why in the third ed. of D.E.Knuth's
"The art of Computer Programming"
it has been degraded to a level of 45 instead of
50.
the references given in TAOCP are
- A. Wiles, Annals of Mathematics 141 (1995), 443-551
- P. Ribenboim, "13 Lectures on Fermat's Last
Theorem"(NY, Springer, 1979)
- W.J.LeVeque, "Topics in Number Theory 2"
(reading, mass. addison-wesley, 1956), Chapter 3
I seem to recall Wiles being credited with the proof.
When I first started reading this draft, I thought to myself, "I could help this guy redraft this in a more readable manner. It's a pity to have good ideas made inaccessible by poor writing".
/29 (that is, 29 bits in the subnet mask, allowing six hosts + broadcast + network base) or a /28. Making smaller assignments makes more efficient use of the available address space. In the "bad old days" you'd have to in practice assign a class C (253 hosts) as a minimum.
.txt text/plain document. The sort of person who cites himself twice, and then cites the same RFC twice too.
This inclination quickly vanished when it became clear that good ideas were in short supply.
Up until a year ago, I was employed by an ISP. One of the major parts of my job was assessing and making IP assignments for customers. As a European ISP, we worked through RIPE and following the RIPE procedures.
There is, in principle, plenty of address space. IPv4 allows more than four billion theoretical addresses. That's plenty. The problem is that there are limits on how efficiently you can assign that space to end users. You can't realistically have 192.133.50.5 on a network in the UK and 192.133.50.6 in Australia, because it would mean having a seperate routing table entry for each individual IP address. Imagine, a routing table 8Gb in size.
So space is allocated in blocks. ISPs are allocated large blocks (typically 32x255 or 64x255 addresses at a time) and in turn assign small sub blocks to their customers. There only needs to be a small number (often one) of routing entries for the entire ISP and all its customers. Instead of having 4 billion routing entries, you have a few tens of thousands.
For those who don't know, the old "classful" system of fixed-size networks (i.e enormous, very big, or just big) is long gone. The Real Live Internet todays runs "Classless Interdomain Routing" (CIDR), which allows any number of bits in the netmask, rather than just the traditional 8, 16 or 24 which characterised classes A B and C respectively.
So when a customer with three staff members and four computers purchased a leased line, you'd assign them perhaps a
CIDR is vastly more efficient, and it's what has kept IP4 running up 'til now. For random distribution of network sizes, it's around 75% efficient (that's not a real-world figure for various reasons). The old classless system, by contrast, was only around 38% efficient. For both of these numbers you have to assume that everyone is being conciencious and using the smallest network they sensibly can.
Now, back to the draft.
One of the (several, and mutually exclusive) things he seems to be proposing is a 64-bit address space with the old 8-bit boundaries back on netmasks. This would give more space, but would be exactly as efficient as the classful addressing scheme - i.e. much less efficient than what we do now.
He seems to want to get the extra 32 bits from the netmask. This reveals thinking which is muddled beyond all hope of salvation. He quite clearly doesn't understand how IP routing works in even the most fundamental sense. You see, fundamentally, the netmask is *not* carried around with the IP address. It's a setting on your host only.
His other big idea seems to be that if we do the calculations in decimal instead of in binary, we will get different - and better, no less - answers. He does seem a little confused on this point, but of course, it's all the fault of those bad ole' IP designers for being deliberately obtuse:
"Nonetheless, it should be emphasized, that the authoritative community as a whole; i.e. Authors of IP Addressing or Internetworking Fundamentals, have shown a lack of continuity and consistency regarding the actual methods, determination and or actual explanation of the processes involved in these calculations. Where by, it has been a consistent error regarding the confusion or inability to differentiate between the calculation of the Decimal Number and the Binary Number for their individual determination. Which, to say the very least, has rendered the understanding of the most significant part of the concept of Internetworking ( that of IP Addressing ) almost an impossible undertaking."
(Indeed, an actually impossible one in his case).
He also comments at one point that the failure of the IP architects to consider extending the address range is probably the cause of the Y2K problem.
Oh well. The man's an idiot. He has exactly the understanding of IP addressing you'd expect from someone who attended (and slept through) two lectures on the subject, glanced briefly at RFC791, again at RFC1550, understands neither and thinks he's an expert. The sort of person who tells you about the font size in his
In short, an idiot. Ignore him.
Hell, around here, we now have to type (oops... I mean 'dial') our area codes even if we're calling next door! Apparently the Bell of PA believes what he's saying...
People could care less which is more practical and efficient; NATing with IPv4 or plain old IPv6, whichever is the latest release and has all of the fancy new bells and whistles (IPv6), most of which are nice extras but unnecessary.
I attempted to read it. It was unreadable.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I am breaking my shite laughing here.
--
In case anyone was wondering whether the guy is a crank, Reference [1] contains Mathematical Proof:
1. E. Terrell ( not published notarized, 1979 ) " The Proof of
Fermat's Last Theorem: The Revolution in Mathematical Thought "
Outlines the significance of the need for a thorough understanding
of the Concept of Quantification and the Concept of the Common
Coefficient. These principles, as well many others, were found to
maintain an unyielding importance in the Logical Analysis of
Exponential Equations in Number Theory.
To complete the Proof, simply use the corollary of the Taniyama-Shinomura Conjecture, which is that if you have proved FLT and your name is not Andrew Wiles, you are a crank.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
4. This draft is not accessable from the main ietf index. Was it pulled or was it never posted? If it was never posted perhaps the whole point was to watch our reaction? But it is...it's in the indernet-drafts directory at www.ietf.org...
If this guy doesn't pass his Cisco exam, will he turn into a pool of iridescent goo and be claimed by Nyarlathotep? It would almost make up for his horrible writing.
What's that? Never heard of it. Seriously, I'd like to know.
>(Hey, isn't there an term used in OS-theory circles regarding overly-general division of resources?
Something like granularity?
>I recall it from the memory management chapter...can't recall the term....)
Maybe I'll remember once my brain stop thrashing.
NATs are the bane of net existance, they break the end-to-end model that the Internet is based on. IP security won't work with NATs, neither will many apps these days (lots of games don't work through a NAT). And for things like IP-based cell phones to take off, you want global addresses for all of them, not NAT addresses.
Yes, to switch over, we'll need to get everyone to run both an IPv4 and an IPv6 stack for a while. Or rely on protocol translators, which have the same downside as a NAT. But it's worth it in the long run.
I want to have 64 bits of globally routable address space for my home.
The problem that many of my detractors (who Should be Obvious to you by now). Is that They have more problems with, ( of course ) the subnet of my presentation ( table 1 ). Needles to say, Nevertheless. That they more than Likely do not comprehend ( of course ) the Fundamentals of the I'm a Fucking Retard Rule ( Needless to say, similar to my Octet rule ).
Never the less, it should be Obvious why I didn't ( or should i say, Couldn't ). Needless to say, pass the fucking Cisco exam because my head ( or never the less, what is on top of my head ) is so far.
Just imagine! Shoved up my ass, that this paper should be my addmitance paperwork out of computer ( or network ). Consutlting/IT Professional, and into scooping M&M's for Dary Queen.
if you read this hampsters paper all the way thru.. take off two points. Take off 3 if you printed it out to read it later.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
bc(1) says:
2^32 == 4294967296
either this guys on crack or his scheme (which is nearly impossible to understand because of his writting) ends up somehow using some addresses more than once. i vote for the former, based on his poor grammar and odd facination with binary representation...
--Siva(too lazy to log in)
Have you seen what an IPv6 looks like? I believe it's 8 groups of 4 hexadecimal digits.
So take the number of IPs you just mentioned, and square it.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
There's absolutely no situation where having a clashing namespace is better in any way!
--
Here it is:
"All of those *.FF and *.00 addresses are wasted! Let's assign them to hosts! This won't break anything! I can prove it mathematically! It's all because nobody realizes that binary numbers are magical!"
In other words, the whole paper is essentially garbage.
Interestingly enough, the author mentions that all of this incoherent rambling is the result of studying for a Cisco Certification examination. Someone should contact Cisco, and inform them that the brain-eating forces of Yog-Sothoth have taken over their textbook editing department.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
This paper reminds me of an article I read a long time ago (1988?) in Scientific American. The author (Professor Arlo Lipof) claimed to have invented a mathematical equation that allowed him to cut a 1"x5"x8" block of gold, and reassemble it into a 1"x8"x8" block (which resulted in a volume increase of about 1.5%.) The article was complete with diagrams and went on for 3 pages on the topic, very much like this paper.
:o). If this is a joke, he's a little out of season.)
(The SA article immediately activated my BS meter, but I got about 1/3 of the way through before realizing that it was published in the April edition try to make an anagram of Arlo Lipof, and see what you get
The main problem with IPv4 that IPv6 is trying to solve is a lack of address space. By using IP masquerading, that problem can be alieviated indefinately, at the cost of increasing the lag time. You get one IP address, which you then use IP masquerading to get up to 2^32 (minus oddballs like 127.*) addresses internally. And if that's not enough addressing for you, you can run IP masquerading on each machine of your internal network, increasing the layers indefinately.
:)
IPv6 is way too scary to actually work
--- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
I dont think there is much need of further proof that either the document or Mr. Terrell are a joke, but anyway... See the References section. First reference is a non published proof by Mr Terrell himself for Fermat's Last Theorem, dated 1979. That, and the continuous references about "Alternate View of the Entire Mathematical field" (his caps, not mine... keeping with his Grandiose Writing Style), are evidences that either he is a wacko or its playing one.
Firstly, this isn't an official draft of an IETF working group - anyone can submit a draft, even if it's this lousy. (Working group drafts are of the form draft-ietf-working_group_name-*)
;)
Secondly, IPv6 isn't really that complex, especially considering this proposal isn't exactly simple (would it really be easier to roll this out instead?!). An excellent starting point is the Internet Architecture Board Case for IPv6. You can also get some good information and links at the IPv6 Imformation Page. I have to say I don't like the way this guy slates IPv6 without explanation, maybe he needs to read up a bit more on the subject.
Finally, although one day we may run out of IPv4 addressing, that's not the immediate addressing problem - the problem is of uneven distribution of addresses. While the USA might be alright, where every corporation who could shout "Me Too!" got a class A, there are other places in the world who are very short on addresses. I've heard it said that Madagascar has just 200 global IPv4 addresses! A whole country run through NAT! *Shudder* (I reserve the right for this to be an urban legend
Anway, there's loads of other really neat stuff in IPv6 aside from extending the address space to keep us all happy....
0.0.0.0 is also used as a source address by machines attempting to acquire an IP address from their local BOOTP/DHCP server on initialization, IIRC.
"What do you want to boot today?"
--
"This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
It's pretty easy to recognize an official IETF draft, the filename looks something like:
draft-ietf-rap-cops-07.txt
with ietf as the second word.
Not like this draft that we are currently talking
about, draft-terrell-math-ipaddr-ipv4-00.txt which was written by some guy called terrell.
Just to make sure there are no misunderstandings an IETF draft is NOT a standard. Not even all the RFCs are standards. When someone makes a reference to an RFC, check to see if it is Standards Track or Informational or whatever.
Can't everyone already have a HUGE private network? Run 10. behind your NAT box. I'm also fond of 125.0.0.0/24
er...I stand corrected. Never the less, I'm sure it was posted as a Sokal-like hoax for the authors jollies.
Let me give this a run through my Slashdot Translater
>The Subnetting features of IPv4 did not offer much through options and
>choice regarding IP Address assignment, allocation, or Networking in
>general. And while Subnetting the Network ( The sub-division of the
>Parent Network IP Address ) did relieve congestion, provided
>performance gains, and improved management. Needless to say, these
>were indeed significant benefits for the groping beginnings. Still,
>it did nothing to increase the number of IP Addresses for allocation
>to establish a new Network, that is, offer another outside connection:
>the Parent Network. However, it did provide the IETF with a foundation,
>if exploited, would have avoided the necessity of an urgency fostered
>by explosive growth, to implement a new IP Addressing Scheme.
Processing for translation.....
...
...
Translation successful.....outputting
Oh man...IPV4 was like so uncool...I mean...it brings me down....I can't deal. This subnet junk was like....suck....but it was cool...I think...for a while dude. And like were runnin out of ip's man...its like..damn...I can't deal....er...just forgot that...think of it like this dude...if you take small hits from the bong...you can buzz for a lot longer because you will like save some smoke for later or somethin.
Oh man...my head is spinnin..
End Translation....
Hmmm...back to the drawing board...guess I was doing something special during that night of coding
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
ipv6 transitioning is a nightmare, no matter how you stack it.
I don't blame people who didn't make it that far through, but it's the first reference to the author's own, unpublished, 1979 proof of Fermat's Last Theorem that *finally* convinvced me of the merits of the proposal.
but I figured I could fit it in because it had something to do with random phrase generation...
go check this out, it's called The Jedi Training Generator. Click on "yodify" and it makes cool, randomly generated (I believe) Yoda-like statements.
Insert mind here.
If his math is anything like his grammar, you can basically write it off straight away. And if it's not, it's still impossible to work out what he's really trying to say since he's not communicating with any sort of precision.
Jon Postal's ghost is haunting this fool. Presumably whomever allowed him to graduate from primary school also is (or at least quitting eduction in disgust.)
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I dunno if anyone is still paying attention to this sub-thread but you can read more about the WEPT at http://iml.umkc.edu/english/wept001.html .
I mention that cause I've received a couple of emails about it.
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
Too many numbers.. Save me!
And the bits about binary being different than decimal... those are actually pretty funny. "Mathematically" if you have two different sets that map 1:1 for all values (0-255, 00000000-11111111, 00-ff) then they are the same. The only way it would be "different" is if they encoded the "2" then encoded the "5" then encoded the "5", which of course, is wrong. (and what got us into the y2k problem in the first place)
Here's an example: http://18446744072649904394/
Which comes from this program: #include <iostream.h>
;
main() {
unsigned long long a;
a = (192<<24) + (215<<16)+ (17<<8) + (10)
cout << a << endl;
}
Good Fast Cheap. Pick any two.
I believe what he is trying to wrap his puny brain around is Classless Internet Domain Routing, or CIDR. This is the big workaround that was put in place a while back to extend the life of the IPv4 protocol. CIDR basically allows for variable length subnet masks from 8 to 30 bits in length. The old classful method, 'IPv4 Classic', had only three possible subnet masks: 8, 16, or 24 bits, which correspond to Class A (255.0.0.0), Class B (255.255.0.0), and Class C (255.255.255.0). Since there were only these three netmask options, and since most people have a hard time with hex numbers, the 'dotted quad' IP number notation was invented. This made it easy for a human person to 'mask' off the network portion of an IP address in their head, i.e. 87.129.44.66 is network 87, host 129.44.66. Or more likely, network 87, subnet 129.44, host 66. While this worked great for binary-impaired humans, it really brutalized the 32-bit IP address space. The smallest network that could be created could support 254 hosts, so if your donut store only has four servers and twenty workstations, then you just wasted 230 IP addresses.
With CIDR, you can use a 27-bit netmask that will support up to 30 hosts. The relation between X and Y, where X is the number of netmask bits needed and Y is the number of IP addresses needed, is: Y = 2^(32-X)-2
Thus, using CIDR, your ISP can allocate just enough IP addresses to suit each customer's needs, at least to within the next highest power of two.
The other technique that is widely used to preserve IP addresses is the use of Network Address Translation, NAT, a.k.a. masquerading, in conjunction with private IP network addresses. Using this scheme allows one to use a very minimal external IP range, i.e. 27 or 28 bit netmask, to support any number of internal hosts.
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
You wouldn't even be able to write all those adresses unless humanity expand beyond the solar system.
And even then, most companies machines will be beyond firewalls anyway, and can still keep using private addresses.
The grammer in that paper is apalling. I hope that english is not the author's native language.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
It was better in the original Yiddish.
Same passage, english to portuguese then portuguese to english:
...
==
The features of Subnetting de IPv4 had not very offered with the options and the
choice regarding the attribution of the IP address, the allocation, or networking in
the general. E when Subnetting the network (the subdivision of
The IP address of the network of the father) alliviated congestion, since that profits
of the performance, and improved management. Needless to say, these were
certainly significant benefits for the starts groping. Still,
fêz nothing not to magnify the number of addresses of the IP for the allocation to
establish a new network, that is, offers one another exterior connection: the
network of the father. However, it supplied the IETF with a foundation, if explored,
would prevent the one necessity urgency promoted by the explosive growth, to
execute a project directing itself new of the IP.
==
Hmm, that's not really all that different from the original
--
I just can't understand complicated stuff. What's so bad about dumbing things down to plain old english?
>Just look at RISC computers which use a 32-bit
>opcode. They sure as heck don't implement 4
>billion different instructions.
Being in the throes of a PowerPC assembler, let me tell you that it sure as heck does *feel* like 4 billion different instructions. There are, to pick one random example, something like 24 variants of the integer 'add' instruction...
don't mind me, I haven't had any coffee today.
-Mars
This guy might have something worthwhile to say but I find it almost impossible to follow his reasoning. The author's communication skills are sorely lacking.
-josh
With a reference like this in the document, it's gotta be a hoax.
1. E. Terrell ( not published notarized, 1979 ) " The Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem: The Revolution in Mathematical Thought " Outlines the significance of the need for a thorough understanding of the Concept of Quantification and the Concept of the Common Coefficient. These principles, as well many others, were found to maintain an unyielding importance in the Logical Analysis of Exponential Equations in Number Theory.
Exccceeelllent. If that's what they want us to do, I'll be sharpening up my consulting pencil. It's what I already do, and I've set it up for people before. It's really a good option; keeps your network private. But it's technically more complicated; time to hang out the networking admin contracting shingle again...
I didn't know that joke RFCs had drafts. Note that the bibliography contains an unpublished "proof" of Fermat's Last Therom.
Near as I can tell (given the grammar) he assumes:
1. Numbers in different bases are "really" in some sense different. In other words, 192(decimal), C0(hex), and 11000000(binary) are all "different numbers". So he has no problem with getting more than 2^32 addresses in 32 bits, because he is working in decimal, not binary.[1]
2. The "dots" in the standard notation for Internet addresses really mean something. (In reality, they're just placeholders, like the commas in "100,000,000".)
3. A "subnet" is magically attached to an IP address. (He seems to catch this error later on.)
What he is doing is letting his addresses overlap.
Now, since he has ambiguous addresses, he has to carry the subnet mask around in the IP packet. Instead of having a 32 bit address, we have a 32 bit address and a 32 bit subnet mask that we have to carry around in our packet. For some reason, he thinks this is better than a 64 bit address. (This would also make routing essentially impossible, but that's another story.)
If you're going to mess with the address length (no matter how you define address!), you might as well go straight to IPv6. The whole point of IPv6 was that *any* change at all in IP was going to be such a pain that we might as well go to a whole new IP protocol.
If you need local addressing, use address masquerading. It works, and the protocol wonks hate it.
--
[1] Q: Why can't Real Programmers tell the difference betwen Halloween and Christmas?
A: It's obvious that 31(oct) = 25(dec)
And this guy wants to be CCIE qualified!?!?!?!
*ROFL*
-=[| synak |]=----------
Two Points:
this is a draft of an informational nature that didn't come from a working group in IETF. Anyone can do this. And it's not on a standard track.
This would require rewriting TCP/IP which asks the question, why not just do IPv6?
My translation:
Jen stepped over to the couch, slowly rocking her hips with each step, accenting the graceful curves of her body. She quickly move in next to him, noting the warmth coming from her lover. His warm hands started at her thighs, and crept up until they were her under her red sweater. He moved his lips next to her face, giving a quick nibble or her ear, and losing himself in the scent of her soft blond hair. She moaned softly, and brought her face closer to her man's ear.
"Rob," she moaned, "show me your Commander Taco."
How's my translation?
--------------------------
I can't believe someone could actually write prose like that. My best guess right now is that the author wanted to post an encrypted message and used a high-order Markov model to encode the ciphertext as a plausible English document.
;-).
The training set for the model might be real RFC's, or possibly the U.S. Congressional Record
...not "spelling".
Though both the poster's and the author's spelling are poor.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
This sounds nifty. Maybe I can pipe the output through 'biff', 'jive', 'chef', or 'valspeak'.
Blech, I haven't read such bad prose since I took technical writing in college. And no, it wasn't from other students, but the postmodernist drivel the teacher forced us to read as part of the class.
Which gives me an idea.. what if this article is in fact a hoax, à la Alan Sokal, but directed toward the Internet community by some spiteful English lit student? Take some bogus mathematics, sprinkle in some jargon with a rudamentary understanding of network architecture, and mix it together in a dense, grammatically flawed style. "Ha! Those nerds will never know the difference! Now the jokes on them! *cackle* *cackle*"
For a quick introduction to some of the issues in the design of IPv6, I recommend RFC 1752 "The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol". Also peruse the RFC Index for some of the whitepapers submitted as input to the IPng process, which led to the current IPv6 Proposed Standard.
I was playing fast and loose with words in my post because I am trying to explain highly mathematical concepts to readers in a way they can understand. A friend of mine once said that sometimes the incorrect explanation is just clearer.
You're right of course. Strictly speaking the problem is that real life doesn't let you apply the axiom of choice. And uncountability is not the feature of the axiom of choice that leads to the BT paradox.
But if I sit here and try to explain all the finer mathematical details, my post becomes 3 times as long and 1/100 as clear.
I discovered quite by accident that fish have a natural propensity to route IPv4. Cisco have naturally chosen to supress this information
which could be of practical benefit to millions of netsurfers and pet-shops alike.
I must submit this to the IETF before it is too late...
A piece of my brain is missing.
[Warning, extremely off-topic, though this does relate to IP-on-Linux issues]
Madwand wrote:
(NATs, which the Linux weenies renamed "IP Masquerading" for no good reason)
Erm, sort of.
Having just tried to set up a GW/FW on a RH 6.0 machine with two NICs, I can tell you that IP Masquerading in the full Linux sense != NAT (masquerading maps all internal IP addresses to the GW's IP address, which isn't really NATing at all - NAT lets you map addresses in both directions). There are, in fact, NAT patches for the kernel that you can compile in and which, to all appearances work fine. The control software for the one I used is ipnatadm and it's modeled on ipfwadm.
My problem wasn't with ipnatadm or with ipchains, however, it was with the fact that Linux's arp is basically broken (when compared with BSD 4.4 or System V arp) in that you can't arp a second IP address onto a MAC address physically in the machine (at least, not properly), which makes it hard to NAT. (Yes, I know I could have used a VIF and done the assignment of the IP to the MAC address through ifconfig, but then I would have had to do some kind of virtual NATing which none of the Linux NAT packages are capable of doing yet.)
The basic schtick is that I threw in the towel and went back to getting OpenBSD to cooperate with the SCSI card in the GW/FW machine.
I'd dig up some links for all this stuff, but I need to run to lunch. I'll try to come back and reply to my own message with urls after that.
Do you have a
Universities should have a WEPT that all undergrads must pass before being admitted. With remedial courses (and not free ones) available.
I think you are exactly right. He does seem to be using the same addresses in "different" networks. Does he really believe it, or is he having a good laugh?
I think the author is trying to say something fairly simple:
True enough, simple in concept. BUT, where are routers going to get the subnet identifier? We will have to (1) modify the IPv4 packet header, (2) change the DNS A record, (3) modify the network system calls, (4) modify the programs that use the system calls, (5) et cetera.Tacking on a few extra octets and calling it IPv4.1 would probably be simpler.
Time for a reality check on this one.
Hrm..... in his preamble, he states that since the document is small, you may reduce and enlarge it by pressing the font up and down buttons in your view menu.
Last time I checked, Netscape doesn't do that- M$IE does. What this means, then, is that perhaps this is written by someone related in some way to microsoft.... may this is their 'open-source' manner in which to 'embrace and extend' IPv4, and kill off the 'public' internet and bring up their 'private' msn network. (Hey, I remember 1996, and 1997, do you? Microsoft wanted to buy several data satellites in order to 'facilitate' high speed data transfer across the continent. Hrm.... how easily we forget.)
Okay, first of all, like everyone else has quite rightly said, this thing is poorly written to the point of annoyance. Did anyone else notice "Figuer 1"? I think this guy might be French and not have a great grasp of English, or else this doc was poorly translated. That said, let's get on to the content...
The author spends a lot of time discussing CIDR - how you can split an IP address on a bit boundary instead of a byte boundary and so squeeze more "usable" IP addresses (really subnets) out of the current addressing scheme. I dunno why he spends so much time on this, as anyone who's at all familiar with modern IP knows it already.
Then, as I think I understand it, he goes on to propose a scheme in which both the IP address and the (sub-)netmask of an IP Address work together to form a sort of meta-address. Using this scheme, he shows how you can effectively "re-use" a single IP address multiple times, each time with a different subnet mask.
I'm not quite clear on how exactly this all works in practice, as it seems to me that it's difficult to deduce a netmask from a naked IP address, particularly if you're re-using an IP address multiple times with different netmasks. Someone else will have to figure that one out.
The claims at the end of this thing are impressive, however. He claims that by using this scheme we can squeeze just a hair over 2 billion IP address out of the current IPv4 address space with it. ("Two _BILLION_ IP Addresses! (w/pinky at tip of mouth)")
If it's actually workable in practice, this would be pretty darn cool.
-Ben
I like how everyone's responding to this RFC; half of you think it's about private networking through sub-somethinging, and the other half think it's a load of cow dung. :)
Personally, I think that this fella was commenting on the way the numbers are assigned, rather than how many are available. His whole discussion is based on the fact that the numbers are divided into too big of blocks. (ie; assigning all of 45.*.*.* to one business.) I figured he was just arguing that we should divide up the numbers differently by shifting a bit off of the first octet onto the second, so that there'd be more subnets to go around.
But either way you look at what's wrote, it still reads like a load of cow dung. :)
James
Linux Network Address Translation is a really good explanation of what's available for Linux and how NAT works in general. (Or, at least, links to those things.)
I think the package offered at Linux IP NAT Forum is the one I tried to use. There's nothing wrong with it, but Linux's arp is inherently broken to my eye and it had become too great an irritation to make Linux do what I knew I could do in an hour in...
OpenBSD, using ipf and ipnat (the real and original way to do this, also available on Solaris, I believe).
Do you have a
produces more coherent text than this. I think my IQ just dropped 10 points just reading that thing. Anyone have any aspirin?
Har har usefull, very humourous.
I take exception to your unfair characterisation of the B.E.F.o.Y.-S. The nit who calls himself "Eugene Terrell" has no connection with our organisation, and is in fact probably from Connecticut.
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
I've made it through most of the article. AFAICT, he postulates adding bits as a method of getting around the number-of-addresses problem, and proposes a different way of organizing subnets.
The *one* (1) saving grace that his article has is that his proposed organizational scheme makes it relatively painless to increase the number of bits down the road, without having to reassign addresses. OTOH, it's easy enough to do that with the present system too (treat your 4-byte IP as the _least_significant_ part of a larger address).
The article was poorly organized and incredibly obfuscated. I really do hope that this person isn't really a member of any decision-making organization. I could give a summary containing all of the useful information on it in a tenth the space, and more clearly.
In fact, I'm seriously considering doing this just so that nobody has to wade through this monstrosity in its original form.
Replicated IP's with logically 'AND'ed subnet masks.. My head hurts, if not from the bad grammer and english, then from the contemplation of an actual address space that big. While his conclusions on expansion of ipv4 appear correct, I am terribly afraid to check his extrapolation of the current scheme. skull.technos.com had a score of trouble during the first period of numeric contemplation, and I fear another will force my brain-kernel to panic. (Or bluescreen. on some days I seem to be running NT in there.)
.sig: Now legally binding!
This paper was necessitated by an overwhelming desire; an attempt to end the apparent disparity in the dissemination of information absent of the logical and thoroughness in rendering an explanation of the IP Addressing Scheme.
I did this because the FAQs were all different...
To render a more pointed fact, I needed to pass a CISCO Certification Examination.
... and for a paper.
However, this can never be accomplished, if the information that is needed and used in the preparation thereof, lacks continuity and propagates errors pertaining to foundational information.Needless to say, my endeavors were not in vein.
I am cool.
That is,as a direct result of this undertaking, I corrected the underlining errors,
I fixed it.
derived a possible alternative approach to the IPv4 Addressing Scheme,
I fixed it.
and expanded its Class system ( that is no longer in use ).
I fixed it.
In other words, I was indeed successful in the elimination of the problems associated with IP Address Flooding inherent in IPv4 and the complexities of IPv6.
I fixed it.
In short, small business and single family dwellings can now have the option of having their own private IP Addressing Scheme, without the disparity resulting from the steep learning curve presented in IPv6. You can all have warez sitez at home. Easy.
While the Internet Community at large, will not suffer a shortage of the availability IP Addresses for assigned distribution. Especially since, while the number available IP Addresses do not exceed the amount reported to be provided, if IPv6 is implemented.
IPv6 does it better.
It does indeed, provide enough IP Addresses to cover their continued issuance for at least another 100 years or so. Which is dependent upon the adoption of an adequate scheme for its allocation and distribution. But it's hard. So there.
Subnetting under IPv4 is a good idea not fully realized. While it is useful in its present form, it is flawed in that it allows the IP address space to be divided up wastefully. Use of a superset of the current subnetting functions will be needed to remedy address waste.
At least, I think that's what he's trying to say.
(Hey, isn't there an term used in OS-theory circles regarding overly-general division of resources? I recall it from the memory management chapter...can't recall the term....)
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
This paper was necessitated by an overwhelming desire; an attempt to end the apparent disparity in the dissemination of information absent of the logical and thoroughness in rendering an explanation of the IP Addressing Scheme.
I did this because the FAQs were all different...
To render a more pointed fact, I needed to pass a CISCO Certification Examination.
... and for a paper.
However, this can never be accomplished, if the information that is needed and used in the preparation thereof, lacks continuity and propagates errors pertaining to foundational information.
...
Needless to say, my endeavors were not in vein.
I am cool.
That is,as a direct result of this undertaking, I corrected the underlining errors,
I fixed it.
derived a possible alternative approach to the IPv4 Addressing Scheme,
I fixed it.
and expanded its Class system ( that is no longer in use ).
I fixed it.
In other words, I was indeed successful in the elimination of the problems associated with IP Address Flooding inherent in IPv4 and the complexities of IPv6.
I fixed it.
In short, small business and single family dwellings can now have the option of having their own private IP Addressing Scheme, without the disparity resulting from the steep learning curve presented in IPv6. You can all have warez sitez at home. Easy.
While the Internet Community at large, will not suffer a shortage of the availability IP Addresses for assigned distribution. Especially since, while the number available IP Addresses do not exceed the amount reported to be provided, if IPv6 is implemented.
IPv6 does it better.
It does indeed, provide enough IP Addresses to cover their continued issuance for at least another 100 years or so. Which is dependent upon the adoption of an adequate scheme for its allocation and distribution. But it's hard. So there.
Sorry, of course you're correct, I got my semantics wrong..
Thanks for the correction.
$ netstat -nr
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
192.168.1.2 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 eth0
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
Why have you got an explicit host route for 192.168.1.2? Seems kinda odd when the next rule would do the same thing...
After wading through this guys paper, and subsequently downing a bottle of asprin to offset the resulting headache, I have come to the following conclusion:
On Jan 1, 2000 we should implement his ingenious plan, and the U.S. should, at the same time, convert to the metric system. (Since it is a known fact that 1 litre holds far more water than 0.28 gallons) This way we'll be able to conserve on water storage space as well as IP address space.
Ugh....
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
My University has a class called English 101 that every undergrad has to pass before obtaining a degree. If you can't write coherently, you won't pass.
...then we can simply "think of it as evolution in action".
That means that we're talking about 16 byte addresses... Seeing as hardware addresses (MAC addresses) are only 6 bytes, that means there'll be a hell of a lot of extra address space, or MAC addresses will cease to be unique (at least on different subnets) or new cards will have longer MAC addresses?... As opposed to IPv4, where the IP address space is smaller than the MAC address space.
As far as I can make out -- and I admit I didn't thrash through the whole thing -- it seems to point out that you can get a lot more flexibility out of IPv4 addressing if you ignore the old "class" scheme and use variable subnetting, duh. What it at least seems to ignore, at least up to the point where my eyes crossed, is that it don't matter how cleverly you variably subnet, you can still only use a given IP address for one (1) device in a given network. Why? Because the subnet mask doesn't get sent in an IP packet, that's why. I've seen routing tables that had several different entries that would get you to the same IP address, all with differing subnet masks, but trust me, whichever one of them you used would get you to the same machine.
I hope this guy didn't pass his Cisco exam . . .
* constrained to splitting a gold bar along gold atoms, which are
* discrete units.
piffle.. ;-)
there's a perfectly sensible demonstration of the Banach-Tarski paradox which can be done in the normal universe:
the solid matter in your gold bar only occupies an infinitesimal fraction of the bar's apparent volume. there are also a finite, albeit large, number of gold atoms in that volume, so, as you said, any discussion of infinitely subdividing them is semantically flawed. empty space is continuous, though, so that *can* be subdivided infinitely. all you have to do is stop thinking about the bar as a structure composed of atoms, and think of the atoms as a sort of 3D-spray-paint to mark off a particular volume of empty space.
if you take a 1kg gold bar, you can infinitesimally subdivide the empty space which exists between the atoms, and use that to create a second, equivalent volume of empty space right next to it. of course, nobody can see it, so we need to mark the boundaries of the space with some atoms. take 1kg of neutron star matter, fluff half of it out so the protons and electrons are no longer in physical contact, and count out the resulting particles until you've built yourself 1kg of new gold atoms. place those gold atoms in the volume of empty space you extracted from the original gold bar so people can see where the edges are, and there you go: two gold bars of equivalent volume, extracted from the volume of a single gold bar.
yes, we had to add extra mass so people could actually see & feel the results, but that's a secondary concern. it was the _volume_ that we split. sure, the engineering is a bit tough at our current level of technology, but it's possible. i think you'll also find that any attempt to disprove the infinitesimal subdivision of empty space will lead you to a proof of existence for the Luminiferous Ether, which has been pretty well kicked in the head by now. the Uncertainty principle says we can do whatever we damn well please, as long as it's too small to see, or if we put things back the way they were before anyone looks.
Maybe it's an Open Source article, and we're all supposed to contribute patches.
Or maybe it's the source code to Windows 2000... hmmm.
--
QDMerge 0.21!
how to invest, a novice's guide
They were going to put it on silicon, then went under a non-disclosure agreement? IT'S TRANSMETA!!!!!!!!!!! THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE UP TO! More seriously, to quote something someone said at the time, "16:1 compression is easy. It's the decompression that's tricky."
Ha! After a few lines I recognized the style... the style used by people who tend to prove Fermat and square circles in their spare time.
because it requires the NAT machine to understand all handshaking protocols that might ever exist to estabish ports. In practice they generally do http and ftp. Try using RTSP/RTP and your packets disappear. And what if we invent another new protocol? We need to rev every NAT/Masquerading machine just to get packets through.
The math does show that IPv4 can be extended indefinately to solve the addressing space . What it doesn't take into consideration is the full breadth of problems associated with IPv4 as IP addresses are bought in blocks and leased off . IPv6 was designed to solve a host of problems . The address space is linked ot many of them but it is still only one of the concerns that has been addressed .
... realize that other people have different problems .
1. Router efficeincy . If you guys think this is licked , you have another thing coming . The pricing on this technology should make this clear . Companies are in desparate need of routing technologies on a scalable level ( Backbone routing is a *little* different than your $3000 Cisco Systems router ) . Changing the IP space format ( from intensely subnetted to flat addressing ) in IPv6 reduces the amount of work neccessary for a router ( any router ) to achieve its task .
If you think that there are as many costs associated with changing the router infrastructure as there are benefits I'll put it to like this :
A new product ( or software for you Linux people ) needs less processing hardware/power to attack a flat addressing scheme ( IPv6 ) . While it does increase the size of the IP addresses that it handles , this less powercentric approach pays off in very little time .
2. Blocks of IP addresses . Subnetting does not increase , in any way , the number of parent IP addresses available . IP addresses being sold in blocks very quickly reduces the number of parent IP addresses available to the world at large . What happens when there are no more IP addresses to be sold . You have to go to a company that already owns a few in order to be subnetted by them . That also means thatyou have to be connected through their routers ONLY . This is fine for remote web hosting but please guys
IPv6 solves ( in principle ) everyones problems in a fairly eaqual way . IPv4 will never be able to do this without taking back the blocks of IPs sold and reselling only one of them to each former owner . That will not happen . No one wants to give up their cake so that it can be divided up again more fairly . Besides they would have to buy more of these router thingies that the techies play with .
your Squire
Squireson
Maybe someone scanned a few RFCs into a automatic text generator and this is what it spit out :)
He really should have checked these RFCs first to make sure he's not re-inventing the wheel.
I noticed that junk... He doesn't seem to understand the implications of what he's writing at all.. Either he is stupid, or he's incapable of communicating in English.
This guy's on the right track, but he misses the boat. You can extend the number of addressess simply by recognizing that the 1's in the binary respresentation of an address can be small or large values of 1. This will increase the number of available address to 32^2. Do the same with the zeros and you get another 32^2. With this, we can address every computer, man, woman, child, and Clinton mistress.
Of course ipaddr_stretcher.exe in the NT Resource Kit makes this whole discussion rather moot.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
He says that we don't actually need IPv6...we just need IPv4 with 64 or 128 bit addresses.
DUH! what'd he think the biggest improvement of IPv6 over IPv4 was???
also, i think he just doesn't "get" the ideas of binary, decimal, hex, or any simple math concepts at all.
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
--Albert Einstein
The vultures are out in force today, I guess...
(I could chide you all on how your time is better spent working but I'm not *that* big of an advocate of hypocrisy).
Salut!
Tom
I got struck in his murky maths but. I decided to skip to the end to see.
The appendix. By pure accident, i read the bibliography section: the guy claims to have prooved Fermat last theorem in '79, notarized.
In short: a prank.
My impression from reading http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-guidelines.txt is that any clown can submit a draft & it will be posted (as long as it's well-formed) -- and in this case, some clown did.
Look at table 4, and you'll see he's getting the extra combinations from the subnet bits. He's seems to be operating under the delusional assumption that the subnet mask somehow floats alongside the IP address. Combine that with his delusional ramblings about decimal vs. binary vs. hexadecimal. (Dude, those are just representations, just like 90 degrees is PI/2 radians is a right angle! I could write the numbers in octal if I wanted to and it wouldn't change their values.)
The reality, of course, is that we can get at most 2**32 (~4.3 billion) globally unique addresses if we completely remove any artificial partitioning and special encodings that would use up encoding space. This guys "mathematical proof" reads like some of those "random data compression" patents that Jean-loup Gailly (of Info-Zip/ZLib fame) likes to discredit on his homepage.
Of course, having partitions and special values does simplify things alot, which is why we don't get all ~4.3Billion addresses. Just look at RISC computers which use a 32-bit opcode. They sure as heck don't implement 4 billion different instructions.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
God-damnit! I mean, WHAT THE HELL!!!
Grammar! THERE IS NO E!!?!?
Do none of you use ispell?!?!
Do none of you even bother now, having become lazy by the "spellcheck on send" features of every usefull mailer?!
AGJ!!!!!!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
It looks to me like this draft is saying:
A) The author feels nobody explains IP Addressing well;
B) There is some discrepancy between the standard decimal representation of an IP address and the standard binary representation of it;
C) The original class A/B/C method of assigning IP addresses is obsolete;
D) The 32 bit IPv4 system could be used for another hundred years without upgrading to IPv6 if you use some obscure addressing scheme that appears to depend on B, above, and hiding some of the address in the subnet mask;
E) Adopting this scheme will be easier than teaching people how to use IPv6.
Well, point A is obvious, if he considers this draft to be a "logical...explanation", than no previous documentation would quite pass muster.
He provides no clear evidence for point B. The number 119 is the same if you represent it in decimal (119) or binary (01110111). If this is not the case, I want to hear it from a mathemetician, not an IETF draft.
Point C is true, that's why we no longer use it. He apparently has either not read or not understood RFC 950, which describes how to get away from the unnecessarily coarse class A/B/C system, without using his equally coarse class A-1/A-2/A-3/B-1/... system.
Point D is not adequately documented to be of any use to anyone. The current IPv4 address allocation scheme still has a lot of wasted addresses, which could extend its life if tapped. I can't even tell if this scheme taps them, or if it just pushes big words around on the page.
Point E is false in this instance, since fully grocking this draft is much harder than understanding and implementing IPv6. Even if it is translated and better explained, I doubt any scheme to tap a significant number of wasted IPv4 addresses would be easier than just upgrading to IPv6. This is because most of the waste is considered "expansion space" by the owners of the network addresses. Any use of these addresses would require not only reprogramming many routers, but spending a lot more time maintaining the resulting routing tables as addresses here and there get used.
The bottom line, IPv4's not dead yet, but IPv6 is still inevitable, and this paper proposes nothing coherant.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Now there is positive proof: too many dot-heads post without reading!
-- Slashdot sucks.
FWIW, friends of mine in the ISP business have said that the only reason we're running out of addresses in IPv4 is that the address space is being abused. Companies buy a bunch of Class C addresses, then decide that a Class B would be easier to manage and buy one of those. That's okay, except that sometimes these companies keep the Class C addresses as well, even though they're not using them.
Rumour has it that whoever's in charge of doling these things out (IANA?) is considering recalling addresses if they aren't used within some time limit (like 6 months or a year).
Forget that proprietary crap. They are also used in OSPF routing, which is an open, industry standard, protocol. I suppose you prefer cisco's proprietary routing protocols to standard ones also?
Let's not forget that while a lack of address
;) that IPv6 is
space is the most obvious (and arguably the
biggest) problem with IPv4, there are other
issues that have come up such as security but
also QoS and general bandwidth control. (I don't
want to start a war on whether or not this stuff
is needed or wanted.)
I believe (smack me if I'm wrong
there to address these issues too. A lot of
people say "If it ain't broke..." and imply that
IPv4 "ain't broke". But it is (or will be soon)
in several areas. Not because it's a bad
technology (heck, it's downright beautiful). But
because it has outgrown it's projected usage space.
This quack is only looking at the address problem,
and his solution (??) appears faulty at best. The
point(s) made earlier are valid: if you implement
this garbage, you'd have to re-write TCP/IP anyway
so why not use IPv6 and do it right.
There was actually a Discover magazine article a few years back that talked about the possibility of space being quantized. While I haven't heard anything about the subject since, I assume that's because the question is still open, not because it's been settled one way or the other.
Energy and matter are quantized, so it is certainly conceivable that space and time are also quantized. Again, unless you have clear evidence to the contrary, I don't think the possibility can be dismissed.
In any case, there is an additional difficulty with applying the Banach-Tarski paradox in real life: you do have to make an uncountable number of very exacting, precise choices at once. Considering that there are only countably many seconds (and possibly even finitely many) in the lifespan of the universe, it seems like it would be difficult to pull that off.
Just because something is out there mathematically doesn't mean we'll ever see it in the real world. For instance, the decimal expansion of pi is infinite nonrepeating. We will never see all the digits of pi laid out in sequence, since there are only finitely many atoms in the known universe, and hence only finitely many sheets of paper to write it on. The B-T paradox is the same kind of thing. I'm quite confident that you will never be able to achieve it in real life.
Do you mean external fragmentation? This happens when a block of resources can be allocated in arbitrarily-sized chunks. After a while, the resource space becomes fragmented, and it can be impossible to find a contiguous block of the appropriate size; the resources to satisfy the request may be there, but they are not in a contiguous block (i.e., they are fragmented).
.0 network address or the .255 broadcast address), two class C networks would have to be allocated. While there is the benefit that this allows for future growth, it wastes 238 addresses.
Contrast this with internal fragmentation, which results when a block of resources can only be allocated in fixed sized chunks. In this case, requests must be rounded up to the next multiple of the block size which results in 50% of the final block being wasted on average.
Allocation within the traditional (class A, B, C) IP addressing model has resulted in internal fragmentation. For example, one might need a network that can support 270 single-homed hosts. Since a class C network can support only 254 host interfaces (we don't count the
Allocating resources (e.g., IP addresses) in arbitrarily-sized chunks will get rid of the internal fragmentation problem. However, if these allocations need to be contiguous (from the standpoint of keeping routing tables small, they probably do -- though memory is getting cheaper these days and people often seem to overemphasize the cost of router state IMHO), we're back to the problem of external fragmentation.
I'm not sure that this is what the author was suggesting, because (and this is a very nice way of saying it) the draft did not effectively communicate the author's idea to me.
Vince Laviano
vince@cs.stanford.edu
A while ago I tried to install RedHat 6.0 by FTP. The computer was in a subnet with a netmask of 255.255.254.0, let's say 111.222.100.x and 111.222.101.x. So the broadcast address is 111.222.101.255, and I would think that 111.222.100.255 would be a legal address. However, giving that as the IP address, I couldn't get FTP working. Changing the .255 into something else solved the problem. So is .255 really illegal in all cases?
Ok, maybe this is just a draft.
But still, with the whole document starting with "The Mathematica Reality...", one would expect to see a few equations in there.. Proof that the concept could be reduced to a hard definition.
I'll agree wholeheartedly with the majority voice so far, that this is a pretty unreadable document.
It's grammatical structure is pretty bad.
I saw no easily accessible algorithm that I could apply a little thought to, and actually examine what he was trying to say.
All the rationale is buried within long, overly complex text, with very little structure conveying the real thought behind the words.
It provides a tantalising view that there may well be a good idea lurking somewhere, but at no point did I see a sign saying "This is the Idea".
Somewhat the same as driving round the center of Birmingham (Or New York City, take yer pick) for the first time, without any street signs or maps, and being told to go and find a particular building.
Maybe you'll get there in the end, but when you do, you're in no frame of mind to appreciate it's architecture...
I'd like to know what's going on behind that obfuscation... Maybe there is something so simple and obvious that it currently escapes us...
Maybe not..
But, without having some fast overview, and a few pieces of mathematical proof and equations, and derivations, I'd point this author back to the drawing board, and request a re-write..
It's no good solving the problems of world peace and harmony for everyone, if you can never explain to anyone how to achieve it...
Please, re-write this in a form that is readily understandable, even if it means asking someone else to proof read, and aid in paraphrasing...
Malk
I sure hope he didn't pass. Of course, the tests don't test writing, just whether one can select the correct multiple choice answer (and pass the lab exam in the case of the CCIE exam).
You do have another flaw... you're right about a class C, but a class B would be 254 * 256, because you can use 0 or 255 in the third octet, just not the fourth. 192.168.0.x being the best example =) a class A would be 254 * 65536, assuming there aren't any other nasty reserved numbers lurking around.
Bingo -- internal fragmentation. Thanks; "granularity" was the only thing that came to mind.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
IPv4 Class D *IS* currently in common use. It comprises address space 224.0.0.0 through 239.255.255.255, and is reserved for multicast communication. I've personally encountered 224.x.x.x addressed frames as CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) amongst Cisco routers and LAN switches, as well as between LAN-attached hubs for RF industrial bar-code scanners.
Nearly everyone has rightly remarked how extremely awful his writing is, so I won't add to the pile here. People have also noticed his startling revelation that "The distinction [between decimal and binary] is that, this is a Logical expression, that has no Equivalence. [LOL]"
However, if you were at all like me and dissected his "paper" for what he was really trying to say, you may have actually noticed (if you were successful) that he considers the subnet mask part of the address (look at Table 1 in his "appendix"). Since TCP/IP fundamentally routes a IP datagram around using only the destination IP address
The opinions I post here have nothing to do with my employer.
Back in my infantile years with TCP/IP, I didn't fully understand exactly what the network mask was or what it did. The author of the paper clearly doesn't either. He's basically treating the network mask as extra addressing bytes, not as the marker between network number and node. He's operating under the premise that the network mask is transmitted along with the destination ip address in an IP packet, and I don't believe it is (I fully admit I may be wrong here, I don't spend my time hacking IP packets). Just my 2c Bono Vox, bono@vox.org
did anyone notice the note near the end (not sure how anyone could stand to read this far into it), right before the list of references:
Note: If you enjoy the exercise, feel free, find and correct the Mathematical problems.
you would think someone writing a paper that so heavily depended on mathematics would actually take the time to check it over several times before submitting it...
--Siva (too lazy to login)
I think everyone is forgetting that IPv6 does more than give us ~2^128 IP addresses. IPv6 also tries to make performance improvements. For example, in IPv4 any router is allow to fragment packets to squeeze them through the hardware's MTU. In IPv6, fragmentation is only allowed at the source of the packet. This means that the MTU for the entire path must be determined ahead of time and packets fragmented accordingly. This will lighten the load on the routers in between the source and destination because fragmentation would have already been done and packets won't need to be broken up/reassembled. There are other improvments as well but the point I'm trying to make is that IPv6 is a result of years of learning experience with the current IP protocol and is much more than simply solving an address space problem.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
The catch (of course there is one!) is that you need to accept the axiom of choice, which basically allows you to make arbitrary choices even if those choices are too many to count. The cuts you have to make along the sphere involve choosing an uncountable number of unknown real numbers in each of the three spatial coordinates all at once.
In real life you could not make such choices, since you are constrained to splitting a gold bar along gold atoms, which are discrete units. This lack of applicability of the axiom of choice to real life has led many in the field to reject the axiom of choice as invalid ... but that's a whole other story.
Can someone translate?
Here goes...
Clarification filter:
Although the subnetting (sub-division of a parent network) features of IPv4 do not offer much flexibility, they have served to relieve congestion, ease management, and provide performance gains. These were meagre benefits, and did nothing to increase the effective number of addresses availible for allocation. Yet, they could still provide a way for the IETF to reduce the need to implement a new IP addressing scheme.
Crap isolation filter:
The subnetting features of IPv4 are inflexible and useless. They did reduce congestion, provide performance gains, and make management easier, but none of that matters because subnetting does provide any more addresses to allocate. However, the IETF can use subnetting to fix the current address shortage.
Crap removal filter:
IP subnetting can potentially be used to remove or reduce the need to implement a new IP addressing scheme, although that was not its original purpose.
Interpretation filter:
So far, IP subnetting has had limited usefulness. However, the IETF could take advantage of it to re-use individual IPs in different subnets. Doing so would at least temporarily remove the need to switch to IPv6.
Plain English filter:
Subnets aren't that useful. We should use the fields to get 4 more octets in our IP addresses instead.
Conclusion:
This guy is the most horrid writer I have ever encountered. I have known functional illiterates who could draft more readable and well-thought-out documents.
I strongly suspect that author was under the influence of multiple controlled substances at the time of the document's composition.
Interpretation filter:
This guy is on crack.
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
The netmask is a per-computer think. It basically controls the broadcast address your computer will use for that subnet.
.127 will be the broadcast for that subnet, and it will not see the packets in the 128 - 254 subnet (unless there is a n explicity connection). It has to do with logical hiearchies, etc.
:-)
Example: 255.255.255.128
means that 192.168.0.1 through 192.168.1.126 will be valid, and fine. But
If this man is saying he can use Netmasks as extra address bytes, he has clearly pointed his ass at the computer and spewed forth bullshit.
Class C subnets are Of the form net.net.net.node
(and have a netmask of 255.255.255.0)..
There are more defined in the applicable RFCs. Like class A, and B.
The problem with IPv4 was that class C was 255 addresses, class B was 65,025 addresses, and class A was 16,581,375 addresess. If your corporate network had more than 65,000 PCs (possible if you had many servers, and happened to be a huge accounting firm), you basically had to take 16 MILLION addresses away from the global pool because that's how IANNA assigns IPv4 numbers.
Ludicrous! But logical, and in fact proper. This is why IPv6 is good. We *can* piss away IP addresses easily
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Uhm.. *ANY* Lan has it's own subnet.
NAT (and his friend NAPT) is junk and a stopgap measure at best. It breaks the "end-to-end" nature of true public networking. Try fitting IPSec onto a network structure with NA(P)T gateways all over the place. How do you insure where your packets are really coming from at that point? I hate the idea of a gateway groveling around at layer seven and changing things around (such as FTP) to make it work "correctly".
Side note, my math was a bit off (I've been up for 20 hours, sue me).
.0 is a network and .255 is a broadcaster.. Forgot to subtract network.
:-)
It's not 255, it's 254 in a Class C..
254 ^ 2 for class B, and 254 ^ 3 for a class A.
Because
Special bonus game: spot more logic flaws I missed
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Take with a grain of salt, for while I do hold a degree in mathematics and have done networking as well, he was difficult to understand.
:).
.these may all be controlled by IP someday. Who knows?)
Problem 1)
Assuming everything in the draft is correct (see following points ), this would require almost global address reassignment, and a complete rework of how addresses are translated and handled. What benefit does this give us over the change to IPv6?
Problem 2)
He seems to be completely ignorant of CIDR (classless inter-domain routing), which removed many of the problems with the previous class-based ip scheme. However, this did not 'give-back' the addresses previously assigned. I suppose with his idea, everyone would need a new address anyway, so that would not be a problem
Problem 3)
**This is the main 'fault' of the argument, and makes me think that it is a joke.*** This structure essentialy requires all traffic to have a 'network' identifier along with the IP address to differentiate the hosts. Each IP address can be used by multiple interfaces(machines), but only one interface will have that particular IP+subnet combination. Each 'set' of subnets will be kept under the 'parent' subnet, so that simple IP collision will not occur. This seems to be so that some routers will not have to be reconfigured. The exercise on how do do this is left to the reader. (I know I don't have a clue, and I don't think Eugine does, either.)
Simply put, IPv4 addresses will be reused by multiple hosts, and we will send another identifier with the address. The combination of this extra identifier (the subnet mask) and the IP address wil make each host unique.
So, My question is, how does this differ so much from implementing IPv6? IPv6 seems cleaner, and easier to implement than changing to this bastardized-IPv4 would be. Also, we would have more addresses available, as this IPv4-A idea would also have us run out fairly soon. (not just machines will need IP addr's in the future. wristwatches, lamps, electrical outlets..
I for one will still support IPv6. You?
you can't translate encrypted packets.
Yes you can.
[To put it generally, if the NAT is trusted and knowledgable.]
And you can, specifically, NAT IPSEC and PPTP. But I take it you weren't referring to them.
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
Fermat's Last Theorem, which all /. readers *should* know.. Goes like this:
x^c+y^c=z^c is untrue for any c>2, where x,y,z, and c are all positive integers.
It has been proven. But many reason that the proof is nowhere NEAR what Fermat thought of, because Fermet wrote this in the sideline of some book or paper or something, along with a note saying "a very interesting proof, although I don't have time to write it here," or something similar. Apparently, a simple proof had just occured to him.
The proof that currently exists for this is huge and complicated. Annoyingly so at that. The search for the simple proof still exists, although most people believe Fermet had thought of what seemed a simple proof, but he was mistaken. I think this is probably the case.
Anyway... The draft author is referring to his (appearantly) unpublished work about his proof, or the existing proof, or something that relates to this, but from the comments beside it, he doesn't make reference in it to the theorem itself or the proof of it, just some other thing that's in that paper that has some bearing on this rfc.
Still, the draft is crap and the guy obviously has no idea how the hell subnetting works, or the fact that implementing his scheme would probably be more difficult than IPv6.
Follow the hacker model. If it's broken, throw it away and write a new one.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Does that say that families and businesses can have their own subnets? That's what it sounds like to me, but then again, I'm ignorant. :)
With adequate equipment, an otherwise monolithic candidic legume may be segmented vertically, or horizontally, into smaller, more easily manipulated fragments.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
...but that is some profoundly lousy writing.
In fact it sucked so much that I was suspicious of it being a genuine IETF draft. I couldn't imagine releaseing to the public a "professional paper" with the horrific language use therein.
Silly me...
My university has a thing called the WEPT (Written English Proficiency Test) that ALL undergrads must pass before receiving a degree. I used to think it was foolish...
This guy would have failed.
License: By reading this you are agreeing that you agree with me.
Why don't we add another 4 fields to the current IPV4 scheme to make us even more confused! my new IP is 137.88.40.11.207.5.77.4! that would give us 17,878,103,347,812,890,624 total IP addresses. That means we can have as many VHOSTs as we want!
If I understand it correctly (and I'm not sure that I do, due to the incredibly obfuscated language) he is claiming some expansion of the IPv4 address space by using multiple instances of the same IP address, differentiated by subnet mask.
I gave up after Chapter 3, as my head was starting to hurt.
His mathematics is extremely suspect, both in his calculations and in his apparent amazement that binary and decimal notations do not coincide. Competent mathematicians writing for a technical audience do not generally point this out three times a paragraph.
If someone finds a kernel of truth or reason in this article, please speak up. But don't go in there without your brain firmly strapped in.
Rupert
--
E_NOSIG
I may have gotten confused by The Creative Capitalization but this scheme didn't sound like it could be put into place without a re-write of existing IP stacks. If the only benefit is that we get to keep 32 bit addresses, I'll take an IPv6 to go, please.
It reads like something babelfish would produce.
running this draft thru dadadodo actually spurts out more meaningful rational thought than he does.
ie.
-Careful Planning attention to the Addressing: Space is the Subject Matter. Needless to IP Addresses for connections to its inherent mathematical method provides for every network.
-The consumer, was over looked.
-Given that many IP Address format, which case, it remains the number of the Total Host Addressing and Host Class D. This Address Ranges for confusion or A Bit, Structure of the Counting.
-Nevertheless, by exploiting the above. I the laws of in other words, the fact, that the Exponent predifined IP Addresses.
..and what should have been much sooner..
-However, this paper concludes.
fou aje oym asoyf ueyf jaffaq afset su!6j!/\ op 'ua>|7!>| ppn7
An example snippet:
The Subnetting features of IPv4 did not offer much through options and
choice regarding IP Address assignment, allocation, or Networking in
general. And while Subnetting the Network ( The sub-division of the
Parent Network IP Address ) did relieve congestion, provided
performance gains, and improved management. Needless to say, these
were indeed significant benefits for the groping beginnings. Still,
it did nothing to increase the number of IP Addresses for allocation
to establish a new Network, that is, offer another outside connection:
the Parent Network. However, it did provide the IETF with a foundation,
if exploited, would have avoided the necessity of an urgency fostered
by explosive growth, to implement a new IP Addressing Scheme.
Can someone translate?
... then networks could be defined to have different masks than are currently used.
;-), and he was only trying to get certified, when he shorted out a couple of brain cells and thought he had stumbled onto a magical fix for the infamous address shortage :-o
When a company reserves a Class B license (and only companies do), they get 64k host addresses. In the 3 companies I have worked for with Class B licenses, over half of the host addresses were wasted. So, by allocating addresses using a subnet between Class C (255.255.255.0 -> 16m nets) and Class B (255.255.0.0 -> 64k nets), such as 255.255.240.0 (x'ff.ff.f0.00' -> 1m networks with 2k hosts each), a lot of waste could be eliminated.
However, at this stage of the game it would mean taking back all of the addresses and reassigning them, PLUS rewriting every IP stack in the world.
IPv6 is also about more than just addressing. So, the idea of staying with IPv4 means giving up those improvements.
I just hope that the DEA doesn't read this paper, because if they aren't already monitoring this guy, they will be
This paper sounds like it was generated by one of those automatic essay generators.
At one point Mr. Terrel writes: "the number of available IP Addresses as being approximately 5.46 * 10^9."
Let's do the math here. How many numbers can be stuffed into 32 bits: 2^32 or 4,294,967,296. (Isn't there more people on the planet than this?)
Wow, that's pretty good: 27% more unique addresses than the pigion-hole principle will allow!
"Put the calculator down."
"Step away from the calculator."
This is where I should have stopped reading, but I continued to see what he was really advocating...
Here's were he finally gets to his point: "a 64 or more Bit Expansion of the current IPv4 Addressing Scheme would more closely approach, and possibly exceed, not only the Number of Hosts, as is the promise of IPv6. But, would retain its overall simplicity, in its implementation and ease of use."
OK, 64-bits is smaller than 128-bits and thus simpler for humans, but he clearly doesn't understand the routing problem that exists in the current network. His scheme (which seems to be to go back to Class-based routing but using 64 bits instead of 32 bits) won't reduce the number of routes being proprogated around: think about the number of Class C, D and E's that he's suggesting and you'll find it makes it worse.
Heirarchical routing will reduce the number of routes being proprogated, but to do heirarchical routing you need to waste space and that's where IPv6's biggest win is: the ability to reduce the number of routes being reported across gateways through truely heirarchical routing.
Could we do heirarchical routing in 64 bits? For the kinds of devices that we have now, we might be able to do so, but what happens if more devices get addresses (like your toaster, TV, phone & lights), then it becomes much harder and we'd have to start allocating things strictly again.
The hard part about IPv6 is the transition, not the number of bits being used. If we need more than 32 and the choice is between 64 or 128, choose 128 so we don't have to do it again in another decade.
Kurt
I have to say this is the funniest damn thing I have read in a WHILE! I went upstairs to take a leak and was still laughing to hard I pissed all over the toilet. It was worth it, though.
Thanks Don!
When you do a technical interview for a NetAdmin, save yourself some trouble and hand the prospect a copy of draft-terrell-math-ipaddr-ipv4-00.txt
If he doesn't start laughing and commenting about how idiotic and wrong the paper is, end the interview and move on!
The previous segment was just a test of the obfuscated RFC document system. Had this been a real RFC you would not have heard the beep or painfully screams.
I repeat this is only a test.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
I always thought that 0.0.0.0 was the loopback address ?? And the net has been classless for a few years now. I was at LISA 98 when someone gave a speech about how we probably weren't going to run out of IP's so long as we continue to hand out slices of class "A" IP. IMO this guy doesn't know what he is talking about. The grammer mistakes I can forgive because english is not everyone's first langauge but he could have at least ran the document through a spell checker before posting it.
Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came)
this guy is smoking crack.
Nearly everyone has remarked how extremely awful his writing is, so I won't add to the pile here. People have also noticed his startling revelation that "The distinction [between decimal and binary] is that, this is a Logical expression, that has no Equivalence. [LOL]"
:).
If you actually want to read his paper, just skip to the bottom where he displays his amusing tables . Any ideas what those small numbers in the last column mean (the 1, 10, and 110 ones)?
However, if you were at all like me and dissected his "paper" for what he was really trying to say, you may have actually noticed (if you were successful) that he considers the subnet mask part of the address (look at Table 1 in his "appendix"). Since TCP/IP fundamentally routes a IP datagram around using only the destination IP address, this won't work at all. Datagrams don't keep a subnet mask around with them, they are nodal notions only. His scheme will actually yield several thousand hosts which have the same IP address, which definitely won't work.
Oh and I love : "To render a more pointed fact, I needed to pass a CISCO Certification Examination." That says it all
The opinions I post here have nothing to do with my employer.
Don't bother to read it. Just skip to the bottom and note that the references include two papers (by the author) cited as "unpublished." The sign of the Kook: notarizing your whacky ideas when no one will publish them.
Your summation of the article is most excellent!
This implies Network Address Translators (NATs, which the Linux weenies renamed "IP Masquerading" for no good reason) at every national border. There's only one teeny-tiny problem with that: you can't build a NAT that's fast enough to handle that amount of traffic!
IP Security is going to take out all the NATs anyway (and not a moment too soon): you can't translate encrypted packets.
That's more readable in places than the original text...
Berlin-- http://www.berlin-consortium.org
DNA just wants to be free...
His math reminds me of something I saw about 10 years ago - there was some stir in the comp.compression newsgroups over a press release by a company called WEB something-or-other (short for Wider Electronic Bandwidth) anyway, this company claimed they had 'almost perfected' a breakthrough compression algorithm that could losslesly compress any file by a ratio of exactly 16:1. They claimed you could even do this recursively on the output of their compressor, until you reached a size of 'about 1k'. Imagine it! They actually believed that they could take absolutely any n-byte file, and map it one-to-one with some file of m bytes, where m is 1024 or so.
:^)
you could argue, I suppose, that with godlike foreknowledge, you could 'number' all the files humanity will ever produce, and the serial number for any document ever produced could fit into under 1k, but, of course, you decompression tables would be *enormous*. -- oh, and I guess that table would be a file, so it would need a new serial number, and thus a new table, ad infinitum.
As I recall, they even issued press releases announcing they had received VC, and were about to release a product as soon as they figured out how to solve the 'highly unusual situation when four identical numbers are at the corner of a matrix' -- they never explained this cryptic gobbledygook, and never released any details of their scheme.
But the really amazing thing was how many yoyos in the newsgroups bought it, hook, line, and sinker, and spouted nonsense such as: "people thought Galileo was crazy, too, but it turned out he was right! Maybe there are things about your precious number theory that we haven't discovered yet!"
Some poor soul tried to explain that there is no "advanced number theory" involved, just plain counting - there is no way to do a one-to-one mapping from one-byte to 16-bytes. You would think a reasonable person could generalize this principle to understand that you also can't do a one-to-one mapping from 1kb to 16kb, but alas, many pundits wrote back, calling the first guy an idiot for not 'noticing' that the company had 'already admitted' you could only carry out the process until a size of 1k.
The whole thing was pretty funny, but rather pathetic at the same time...
Ghod, that was one of the most unreadable pieces of crap I've seen in a while. I hope it didn't say anything important, I couldn't finish reading it.
The guy needs to go back to grade school and, relearn basic. Rules of English punctuation. He sprinkles commas. At random with, no apparent clue about where periods belong ( to say nothing of the strange spaces around parens ) .
I don't trust his math, either.
IPv6 is coming, anyway. Doesn't almost everything that counts already support it?
-- Alastair
"The problem however, is that, throughout every explanation ( read thus far ) of this IPv4 Addressing Scheme. "
Incomplete comparison anyone?
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
He actually did propose extending the number of bits in IP addresses. The main point of the new subnetting scheme, AFAICT, is to make it easier to add these bits while keeping older addresses valid. However, his new scheme isn't necessary for that (click on "user info" to see my previous response).
Go to Corpspeak Generator at lavarand.sgi.com and see one better (and truly random!!!)
Jaime Herazo B.
(I lost my slashdot password and i'm too lazy to create a new account or retrieve the old one so don't cry)
Having a prefix like an area code wouldn't help much. When I lived near Detroit my area code was changed twice in three years as 313/810 were split into 313/810/248 and then into 313/810/248/734. Calling an old neighbor now requires trial-and-error to guess their new area code.
As for the spelling and punctuation, maybe he was using voice (non)recognition software
Anyway, the whole article smells strongly of a hoax -- making fun of overly-complicated programming specifications.
I tried re-loading the paper 4 times and each time it ended in the middle of a sentence with the word-fragment "bet". I obviously did not see anything which supported the author's claims. However, given his fragmented grammar and his nonsensical references to representations of IP numbers in bases other than 2, I doubt very much that his thoughts were sufficiently coherent to arrive at a useful conclusion.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
This is just like the short-term solutions to the Y2K problem, like using hexadecimal for the decades or going back to 1972 - it works for NOW, but it just puts off the inevitable transition.
A plan to squeeze a few more IPs out of IPv4 is simply a quick and dirty solution that, given the exponential growth of the Internet, would only last about a few years (I have no idea how he thinks this will last another 100 years - I assume his math is as bad as his grammar.) And it ignores the main benefit of IPv6, which is that IP addresses will not have to be rationed out in the way they are now. Dynamic IPs will become a thing of the past.
I know that the transition is going to be difficult, but we should learn from Y2K - the transition has to be made sometime, and it's better to do it sometime before it becomes a necessity.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I think it was a joke. Fermat, wrote in a notebook that he found a proof of his theorem, but that it was too small to fit in the margin. Sounds like the RFC author is referring to that.
Also, I was surprised to not find an mention of CIDR in the entire document. The IP class system has been obsolete for nearly five years....
--
I counted 11 nonetheless and 14 nevertheless. Also 8 "needless to say". Well, I am convinced. Someone should offer this guy a research grant at a university quick. And to think all those guys working on IPv6 didn't know what they were doing. Can anyone call himself an "IT Professional, Author / Researcher" and call his paper an Internet Draft -- and reference two unpublished papers by himself to boot? Isn't there some body that filter's this stuff? Ken
I am by no means a TCP/IP expert, but I understand basic routing and CIDR. I have also participated on the 6bone, even though I had no clue what I was doing and still don't really know how I made it work. I hope that means that I am certified to discuss this.
In This Crack-Head's Dream World:
Basiclly, what this thing all boils down to is that you use the subnet mask information to store extra bits of network addresses. He talks about the binary and done by the netmask when routing and how this can be used to translate addresses of the parent network. Mathematiclly, this adds up to a greater number of addresses.
In the Real World:
This is MORE CONFUSING than IPv6 and what is even further irritating is that it will require MAJOR CHANGES to the existing IPv4 protocol which would render the modified protocol (while it might even keep the same packet structure) incompatible with legacy IPv4, especially where Internet routing is concerned - particularly because the subnet mask does not travel with the IP address in the packet. The subnet mask effects the IP number Only Once meaning that even if this stupid thing could be implemented, every network router would have to do some kind of NAT to get packets where they need to go. This would slow down the entire Internet and create headaches and unnecessary overhead. Imagine troubleshooting! You would know the IP but not the Subnet Identifier! Speaking of that, there's no way to get the information back because you'd have potentially multiple hosts with the same address and different identifiers, but since you wouldn't know the identifiers, you're screwed.
Why IPv6 is better
First, IPv6 has a larger address space. Much larger. We're talking over 3K addresses for every square meter of Earth! That's about all most people know about it, though. Interestingly enough, that's the only problem that our friend who wrote this little paper addressed. IPv6 sets out to do more than increase the address space, though. Some of the things people don't know that are crucial to the widespread acceptance and success of the protocol are the following:
- Enhanced Multicasting, Subnetting, and Routing: Partly because of the increased address space and studies of IPv4, we can allocate more addresses for these purposes. Multicasting will ultimately reduce bandwidth in media-rich Internet applications, but isn't currently robust enough to do it right with IPv4.
- IPSec encryption support: Isn't this one obvious? Secure data structures built in at the protocol level as a STANDARD not some bizzare
.diff file you apply to your kernel. - EXTREMELY easy to tunnel IPv6 over IPv4: IPv6 has a tunneling architecture that provides for legacy routers and switches to move IPv6 packets encapsulated in IPv4 packets without issue. Look at the 6bone. Almost all of the IPv6 out there is running piggyback on IPv4 without any problems. This support is key for migration. Imagine trying to encapsulate that freak's subnet identifier junk in IPv4 packets and then parsing and decoding that junk!
Fingers are tired. Review is finished. Either that or I forgot the rest. All in all, the guy's math is right. He expanded the address space. Now if he wants to rewrite every TCP/IP stack in existance in every O/S and Router, then let him do it. I find it almost mind-numbing that he says IPv6 has a steep learning curve when he is throwing out this junk. The math is the easy part. The implementation would have SysAdmins across the country buying drums of coffee and barrels of Advil.Personally,I like everything that IPv.6 would take care of but here's why I think the concept is lacking. We need to develop an IP scheme that will not need an overhall in anther 100 years or so. We need to develop some sort of Multipul Internet Protocol. The reason behind this is that after having the internet as the wonderful sorce of communication that it is for 130 -40 years new Inet devices will pop up and IPv.6 will also eventually run out of addresses.
Granted we wont be here to see IPv.6 fall from grace, but why should we leave a legacy behind that later will cause only more problems than our current delima. We need to develop a continually adaptable (IPv.X) that is fully modifyable when we run out of addresses next time. The protocol should be developed so that when it reaches a certain point to where it can by some act of godly coding recognize an extra octet when need.
Sorry, but I believe we need a complete solution not a 100 year patch.
I also found the paper to be based on a not so firm grasp of the problem. But I could have totally missed his point, because he didn't proof that white paper very well and it was hard to understand (english wise.)
Psyc_Snyper
0.0.0.0 is not the default gateway, in the instance that you show 192.168.20.1 is the default gateway. When defining a static route you would do something like ip route network next-hop address mask 0.0.0.0 is the network address for the entire address space. 0.0.0.0 is also the subnet mask of the entire address space, thus all packets are passed through this route if no other route is known.
-------------------------------------------------
- --
There are two additional points that warrant mention in this deliberation:
1. ' The Octet Rule
2. The Laws of Ones and Zeros in the IP Address format.
Let's examine number 2 first.
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This must be a joke. Besides the horrid grammar, who arbitrarily orders points that could be in any order and then intentionally discuses them out of order?
Joel
Please note:
ANY madman can at ANY time send ANYTHING that looks approximately like an internet-draft (that is, it conforms to the format guidelines), and get it published as such.
That's part of the "open IETF process".
This draft is a clear indication that it's working as designed.... it's total nonsense, as far as I can see, but got published.
No censorship.
Harald T. Alvestrand
Member, IETF Internet Archithecture Board
I always thought that 0.0.0.0 was the loopback address
No, 127.0.0.1 is the loopback address (localhost) 127.0.0.0 is the loopback network, and 0.0.0.0 is default gateway.
$ route -n
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.20.18 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 1 lo
0.0.0.0 192.168.20.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 138 eth0
I get the impression that there's now some sort of automated filing system for Internet Drafts... this guy's writing is beyond unreadable. And if I understand what he's saying right - and I have no idea whether I do - he seems to be suggesting a near-complete flattening of the IPv4 address space, which shows complete ignorance of the concept of routing tables. The main purpose of IPv6 isn't "more IP addresses" - it's hierarchical assignment of addresses, to ease assignment and routing.
Fermat's Last Theorem: The Revolution in Mathematical Thought "
Outlines the significance of the need for a thorough understanding
of the Concept of Quantification and the Concept of the Common
Coefficient. These principles, as well many others, were found to
maintain an unyielding importance in the Logical Analysis of
Exponential Equations in Number Theory.
No shit. This has "crackpot" written all over it.
-- $SIGNATURE
Is jwz testing dadadodo again, or did someone else write their own dissociator?
...or perhaps someone was feeding zippy the pinhead and emacs doctor too many RFC's...
...and I have a feeling they never passed that Cisco exam.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Doo Wah Doo Wah Doo Wah Diddy
Readin' that thing made me feel so giddy
He wants to be rid of route aggregation
If you don't agree you've no imagination!
Just follow the math, it's plain as plain can be
Hasn't been this good since I read Lawsonomy!
He's worked it all out, his conclusions are for real
And if you agree, then we can make a deal
On a bridge I know up in New York City
Doo Wah Doo Wah Doo Wah Diddy!
No matter how much hand-waving you do, there's still only 2^32 (4 billion-ish) possible unique addresses. (And many of these are unusable.) This is just a mathematical fact.
This guy's fallacy is that he thinks the same address can be used for several hosts that have different subnet masks. This would be true if the subnet masks were sent along with the addresses. However, the subnet masks are not known, and under his scheme, there is no way to determine from just the address whether a host address that starts with 128, for example, is in A-1, A-2, or A-3.
I'm not sure what kind of scrutiny the IETF gives the Internet Drafts it publishes, but I really thought it would be more than that. Apart from its bad construction and obscure language, it is simply inaccurate. He seems to be complaining about not being able to pass the CISCO Certification Examination in the Abstract. At least CISCO knows when someone is just a putz.
The "A", "B" and "C" classification of IP addresses only refers to the package size by which they are sold. If you buy a Class A series, you have the right to use those approx. 16M addresses in any way you like. Subnetting, OTOH, depends on how you have set up the routers inside your assigned address space.
For example, my PC here (on the company's network) has an address in the 10.* network. However, the netmask is set to 255.255.224.0, meaning that I can only reach a set of about 56000 machines directly. For all the other ones, I need to specify a gateway. (And of course, to reach the real internet, I use a proxy server.)
Anyway, Very Bad Things would happen if ever another machine shows up on the company network using the same address as mine, regardless of its subnet mask.
WWTTD?
Yahoo people search reveals that this guy is/was reachable @ msn dot com. Which basically proves the subject line. He is probably incapable of it.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
When I can get through, I will encheferize it. It may be more readable that way.
So I am sitting here reading some of the responses after trudging through that fine piece of writing and find myself amazed.
F /...
Amazed that many of the posters here apparently don't know about 10. and 192.168. nets set aside specifically for doing things like. NAT is a great thing. Its what we need for IPV4 until we can finally convince everyone to move on with V6.
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Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
Ick, what a useless paper...
"There yet remains a value in the IPv4 addressing Scheme, which surpasses the promises of IPv6, and could conceivably satisfy our needs indefinitely without an expansion beyond the 32 Bit address range. That is, if it were distributed with country and or state codes as its prefix."