Re: IP address fee??

["Stephen Sprunk" <ssprunk () cisco com>]

Thus spake "Joe Abley" <jabley () automagic org>
> On Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 01:13:27PM -0500, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> > Because "Cee" is easier to pronounce than "slash twenty-four".  Ease of use
> > trumps open standards yet again :)
>
> Nobody was talking. "/24" is easier to type than "class C". No
> trumps!  Everybody loses!

I just write/say "C" unless the meaning would be ambiguous.

> How many people learn about networks from certification courses or
> in school, anyway? It was always my impression that people learnt
> mainly by listening to other people.
>
> If networking on the front lines is an informal oral tradition more
> than it is a taught science, then perhaps it's natural for obsolete
> terminology to continue to be "taught" long after it stopped having
> any relevance.

I'd bet most of the customers I deal with learned networking from OS manuals or
CCNA study books, all of which still teach classful addressing as the primary
method.  All of the ones I work with use the term "C" or "class C" to refer to a
/24, and all are noticeably slower when dealing with non-/24 masks.

The point of communication is to get an idea across; if most of the people you
communicate with don't understand slash notation, then you use terms they're
familiar with even if they're imprecise or inaccurate.

I think NANOG's ISP-centric membership may skew the perception of our lexicon's
state.  Most network operators are not ISPs.

S