Re: Support for 240/4 and 0/8 addresses in NetBSD

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> So, for as long as there have been classes and as long as localhost
>> has been 127.x.x.x (I don't know which happened first),
> Classes came first, those date back to when IP addresses were
> expanded from 8 to 32 bits (ie: long long ago).

I was not aware they ever had been 8 bits.  I find that amusing -
because it means there actually is historical precedent for the
"quadruple the number of bits" that happened from v4 to v6.

I wonder how long it'll be before we go to 512-bit addresses...128 bits
of address space sure seems infinite now, but, well, 32 bits of address
space seemed infinite then too.  Cue xkcd #865....

> While ethernet (the original 3Mbps version) probably existed about
> the same time, it was still very experimental, and expensive.

Well, sure, but expensive never bothered the DoD, and as I understand
it they were a major driving force behind networking in those days.

> [I]f the preceding 126 [class A networks] were all used up, having
> one more available wasn't really going to help anything much).

And it won't.  Even (what we now call) a /4 won't help all that much.
But even a little help seems to me - and, apparently, others - to be
worth trying for now.

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