[ih] When did "32" bits for IP register as "not enough"?

[Jack Haverty]

I think what you're seeing is that the various people and groups working
on "the Internet" in the early times (80s) didn't have the same view of
the goal. 

The "let's experiment with new ideas for routing, protocols, congestion
control, etc." crowd saw 32 bits as plenty for what they envisioned
doing.  This would include a lot of the DARPA "experimental" work.   I
suspect Vint didn't want yet another major change to TCP/IP to halt
other experimental work in how to use the Internet for the year or two
it would take to change all the software again.

The "how do we build something for the whole planet" crowd saw 32 bits
as totally inadequate.  This would include the emerging ISPs who wanted
a big market, and the ISO designers targeting the long vision.  These
efforts produced a lot of paper, and software and hardware that worked
if you adopted their particular "walled garden", but nothing with
TCP/IP's universality that was embodied in things you could actually buy.

IMHO, both were right in their positions.  They were simply working on
different problems, and probably didn't realize it at the time.

TCP/IP was later widely viewed as the "interim system" to be used
outside of the experimental world, while the ISO et al were getting the
final system in place.  It worked well enough, and much better than
anything else that was available.  Plus there was a small army named
IETF tweaking and patching the system to solve operational problems that
came up.

That "interim solution" viewpoint sidestepped a lot of bureaucratic
obstacles since it was easier to get approvals, and fight fewer battles,
for an interim stopgap.

I wonder when (and if) the Internet ever graduated from "interim
solution" status...

/Jack Haverty

On 2/13/19 2:34 PM, Ross Callon wrote:
> There was some mumbling about 32 bits not being enough as early as
> 1980. In 1980 there was the beginning of the effort that became CLNP.
> The first related proposal came out of BBN and NBS (National Bureau of
> Standards, which is now called NIST) in 1980 and proposed that what
> became CLNP should be just IPv4 with 64 bit addresses and the source
> quench removed, and nothing else changed other than the version.
> At the time BBN had a contract with NBS. This proposal was taken into
> ANSI bound in bright orange cover paper, which caused it to be
> unofficially named the “pumpkin paper”. Around the same time I
> privately mentioned to Vint that instead of going from an 8
> bit network number plus a 24 bit subnet address to class A,B,C
> addresses, instead they should go to 64 bits. He said this would be
> too disruptive. I didn’t find out until the ROAD meetings many years
> later that someone else, I think probably Bob Hinden, had told Vint
> the same thing at about the same time. 
>
> Of course, at the time I had absolutely no idea how to get anyone to
> agree with this change, and I was unaware that ANSI and ISO would be
> unable to get anyone to follow their standards. 
>
> I recall the ROAD group as occurring while I was still at BBN, which I
> left in 1988. As such the group must have met no later than 1988. NAT
> was discussed. I thought that Van Jacobsen brought the idea into the
> ROAD group although Paul Francis was also participating, and there was
> someone else whose name escapes me (possibly Vince Fuller) who was
> also proposing NAT, and of course this doesn’t say whose idea it was
> originally. 
>
> I think of CIDR as having two parts. One was just getting away from
> the class A, B, C restrictions. I don’t know where this came from. The
> other was assigning addresses topologically. I think that the
> topological part came later than the “no A,B,C” part. 
>
> Bob Hinden might remember some of this. 
>
> Ross
>
>> On Feb 13, 2019, at 5:01 PM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
>> <mailto:jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>> From: Craig Partridge
>>
>>> NAT was a product of the ROAD (Routing and Addressing) working group
>>
>> Err, I don't think so. AFAICR, the IETF stuck its head in the sand
>> for a long
>> time over NAT. (Which definitely has its downsides...)
>>
>>> I recall, NAT was Van Jacobson's idea
>>
>> He and Paul Francis/Tsuchiya independently invented it, I think? I
>> first heard
>> about it from Van at the IAB 'addressing/routing retreat', or
>> whatever that
>> meeting was called.
>>
>>> CIDR, I think, was Jeff Mogul's idea.
>>
>> I don't think so; I'm pretty sure Jeff was out of the IETF world by
>> then. Maybe
>> you're thinking of his earlier document on subnetting a la MIT?
>>
>> CIDR came out of the ROAD meetings, but I don't know if it was any
>> specific
>> person's? Also, like I said, it was in mechanism identical to Roki's
>> supernetting thing (in fact, the early RFC's on it call it
>> 'supernetting', not
>> CIDR), although he had proposed it for a totally different
>> reason/need (IIRC,
>> he wanted a host on an X.25 VAN to be able to send packet to a host on a
>> different VAN, without going through a router).
>>
>>  Noel
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