Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-dnsop-dontpublish-unreachable-03.txt

[Tom Limoncelli <tal@lumeta.com>]

On Feb 14, 2002, 09:03 (-0000) Philip Hazel <ph10@cus.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> I didn't want to put in an explicit list, because people would interpret
> it to be exhaustive. I was trying in the document to establish a
> principle, not give a recipe. I don't think this is the place to
> attempt to list all the private addresses - especially with IPv6 at such
> an early stage with things changing a lot still. 2 is of course a
> special case, and I mention some of 3 purely as an example.

IMHO the draft/RFC is useless if it doesn't include an explicit list.

By not listing the explicit list, you are assuming that the reader is as
smart as the author.  If that were true, the reader wouldn't be reading the
RFC.  Write the RFC for the actual reader, not the reader that exists in
some utopian pipe dream of what you wish an RFC-reader looks like.

You can list them with a note like "currently these are the well-known CIDR
blocks that fall into this set of principles, additional CIDRs are
identified now and then.  Please be aware of this." or have the last item
in the list be "Plus other CIDRs that fall into the principles listed above
as they are identified."

I am constantly recommending this list to clients, and it would be useful
if there was one specific RFC that I could point them to (sort of a
"drawing a line in the sand").  I'm sure the ISP community would appreciate
it also.

--tal

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Tom Limoncelli -- tal@lumeta.com  --  www.lumeta.com
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