IPv4 address shortage? Really?

[marka at isc.org (Mark Andrews)]

This has been thought of before, discussed and rejected.

In message <1299498200.29652.40.camel at kotti.kotovnik.com>, Vadim Antonov writes
:
> I'm wondering (and that shows that I have nothing better to do at 3:30am
> on Monday...) how many people around here realize that the plain old
> IPv4 - as widely implemented and specified in standard RFCs can be
> easily used to connect pretty much arbitrary number (arbitrary means
> >2^256) of computers WITHOUT NETWORK ADDRESS TRANSLATION.  Yes, you hear
> me right.
> 
> And, no, it does not require any changes any in the global routing
> infrastructure - as implemented now, and most OS kernels (those which
> aren't broken-as-designed, grin) would do the trick just fine.  None of
> that dual-stack stupidity, and, of course, no chicken-and-egg problem if
> the servers and gateways can be made to respect really old and
> well-established standards.
> 
> DNS and most applications would need some (fairly trivial) updating,
> though, to work properly with the extended addressing; and sysadmins
> would need to do tweaks in their configs since some mythology-driven
> "security" can get in the way.  But they don't have to do that en mass
> and all at once.
> 
> The most obvious solution to the non-problem of address space shortage
> is the hardest to notice, ain't it?
> 
> --vadim
> 
> P.S. Hfr YFEE gb ebhgr orgjrra cevingr nqqerff fcnprf bire choyvpnyyl
> ebhgrq fcnpr, Yhxr. Guvax bs cevingr nqqerff ovgf nf n evtug-fvqr
> rkgrafvba gb gur sbhe-bpgrg choyvp nqqerff.
> 
> P.P.S. Gb rkgraq shegure, nygreangr gjb qvfgvapg cevingr nqqerff fcnprf,
> nf znal gvzrf nf lbh pna svg vagb gur urnqre.
> 
> 
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: marka at isc.org