Hello David, thank you for your e-mail. Please find my replies below:
On 28 Jul 2021, at 15:59, David McGough, KB4FXC via 44Net 44net@mailman.ampr.org wrote:
Hi Everyone,
As a casual observer and out of curiosity, I looked over the proposed TAC document and I'm left puzzled as to what REAL problem this proposal is attempting to resolve??
In this day and age of very inexpensive, commodity ARM-processor based computers (like the RPi4B or Rock64, etc.), the notion that cheap routers have insufficient resources to maintain large dynamic (or even static!) routing tables and quickly route traffic, leaves me completely baffled--since I already do this all the time.
It’s true that this is possible and that modern devices can for cheap (for what I or you at least consider cheap, that’s not the same for everyone) perform routing using dynamic protocols like BGP. We’re not saying they can’t.
The REAL problem we try to solve is to decrease the barrier of entry to the network as much as possible, and allow as many people to join, as easy as possible. We also want the people that join to be free to do whatever they went, with only a few rules, so they can experiment and learn. We don’t think that 100% of the network must be a super good, production-ready network, centrally managed, with a good SLA. We think that we should provide the addresses and some basic infrastructure (for people that just want to connect), and then with these tools in the hands of everyone around the world, just sit back and watch what they can create.
We want to provide people with vision and ideas the tools, and then get out of their way, and look at what they’re able to do with it.
Also, I really don't understand why in this day and age of scarce IPv4 space, anyone would want to make a new, private, non-Internet available block?? I realize the original intentions and the purpose behind the 44/8 allocation. With the absolute explosion of directly ham-radio oriented IoT devices, I would argue that Internet routable "experimenters" space is more important now than ever.
As I have explained in earlier e-mails, we do not currently face any scarcity, with either the current or the proposed policy, for the foreseeable future. We are one of the lucky groups to have received a /8 network which included more IPv4 addresses than there are radio amateurs around the world. The primary reason we want to use 44.128/10 for this use case is because it’s the only way to guarantee that Intranet users will receive a non-overlapping and globally unique space. And after looking at the numbers, we are convinced that we can *afford* to do this.
I see many people that don’t want to use 44.128/10 for the Intranet, but I do not understand this: do you prefer to have the IPv4 space sit, and not be used, and collect dust (or Internet radiation) instead of letting other fellow radio amateurs use it? Why is that? What do we gain by having a /10 (2 actually) sit and not be used if we already have people (most users now?) that want to use it? Am I missing something?
Antonis