2007/631 Class E IP Address Configuration

[James Carlson]

Erik Nordmark writes:
> James Carlson wrote:
> > Sebastien Roy writes:
> >> This fasttrack is being submitted for two specific behavior changes:
> > 
> > Are there any <netinet/in.h> macro changes to go along with this?
> > 
> > What will inet_lnaof(), inet_netof(), and inet_makeaddr() do when
> > faced with Class E addresses?
> 
> Those routines assume classfull IP addresses, and such a thing was 
> obsoleted when CIDR was introduced.
> There is no classfull mask associated with Class E, and if we tried to 
> convince the IETF that they should pick one just so that the above 
> (de-facto obsolete) routines can do something with Class E, I think 
> folks would laugh at us and wonder why we haven't heard of CIDR yet.
> 
> Thus the behavior of the above classfull routines is undefined with 
> Class E. Should we make that be part of the specification/case?

That'd help make the case complete.

The alternative would be to specify that they assume a /32 mask, just
like everything else.  That'd make them consistent.

Your choice, but I'd probably opt for consistency.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
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