[H-GEN] lost the plot... most likely

[Steven McIntyre]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and
Unix-related topics. ]


> > >well I know that BUT no one is using the range 192.160.0.0 ->
> > 192.160.0.255
> > That is very much not the point.
> > There are more than half a million IP addresses in the private space, and
> > absolutely no reason and no acceptable justification to not use
> > that space
> > -- that's what it's for.  Setting it up wrong now means you will
> > have to fix
> > it later, effectively doubling your workload.
> > It may seem trivial, but bad habits formed now can haunt you later..
> I agree.  The whole reason for allocating private address ranges is so that
> people using these ranges CANNOT conflict with other people who may also be
> using these addresses - they are non-routable.
> By using a public address space not legitimately allocated to you means that
> there is the distinct possibility of your machines conflicting with other
> machines on the Internet at some point in the future.  I remember a large
> $oftware coMpany at one stage incorrectly patched a switch into the wrong
> port and this resulted in their entire office being live on the Internet and
> not behind ANY firewall.  This ONLY occurred because they were using a
> public address space - if they were using 10.0.0.0, 192.168.0.0, etc then
> there could have been no problems.
> As far as I'm concerned, there's no plausable excuse for ANYONE using public
> address space not specifically assigned to them, whether this is behind a
> firewall on machines that will "never" be connected to the Internet.  None.

  Several on the mailing lists were very quick to criticise the use
of non-private IP addresses on networks which are not directly connected
to the Internet, ie: via IP-Masq so the IP's are not visible to the
outside world.  I'm adding my criticism as well, the addresses 10.0.0.0/24,
172.16.0.0/16 and 192.168.0.0/16 were explicitly set aside for private
use so they do not interfere with machines legitimately using other 
IP's on the Internet. 

  The argument of no one on the Internet will be affected because their
machines are not directly connected or reachable (for whatever reason) is 
a scapegoat and nothing else.  I view this as someone who is so lazy they
aren't prepared to do the job properly, and quite frankly I will refuse
to offer assistance to anyone who blatantly ignore guidelines like this.
 
  My summary of this is, if you people outside expect assistance to diagnose
problems from me and probably others on this mailing list then do the setup
right from the beginning.  I assure you I will not be offering any assistance
to anyone if they refuse to follow RFC's which outline the use of private
IP space.  I immediately noticed the 192.160 address as incorrect, and
was wondering how others would react to it.

  Now only if all the IP's were just numbers, my life would be so much
easier.  Whether I can commit IPv6 address to memory remains to be
seen ;-)

  One extremely busy student, in their final week of semester...

  Steven McIntyre
  stev at uq.net.au
  3rd Year Info. Tech, QUT (Gardens Point) - Brisbane, Australia
  Majoring in Comp. Sci and Data Comms.


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