IP foresight

[Finger in the Infodike <haas () ski utah edu>]

Just to put a little perspective on this whole debate about forseeing your
IP address needs, I was cleaning out my desk and found a copy of a message
sent on June 5, 1984 to me (then haas () utah-20 arpa) thanking me for getting
the X.25 connection to Japan working.  The whole Internet has evolved in
the 11 years since.  I'm a fairly serious amateur student of technology
history, and I'm not aware of any other technology that has grown at
comparable speed.  I think it would be nice if we gave the folks at the
InterNIC a break, and recognize that they are attempting to deal with a
situation which is basically impossible.  The only thing which I can
see offering any real hope is IPng, with RFC 1597 as a plausible stopgap -
at least I hope it's plausible since I'm recommending it to clients, most
of whom are paranoid about security and want a firewall anyway.

-- Walt
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