[51795] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IP address fee??
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Sprunk)
Fri Sep 6 12:49:59 2002
From: "Stephen Sprunk" <ssprunk@cisco.com>
To: "Joe Abley" <jabley@automagic.org>
Cc: "Richard A Steenbergen" <ras@e-gerbil.net>,
"Derek Samford" <dsamford@fastduck.net>,
"'Owens, Shane (EPIK.ORL)'" <sowens@epik.net>, <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2002 11:41:07 -0500
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Thus spake "Joe Abley" <jabley@automagic.org>
> On Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 01:13:27PM -0500, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> > Because "Cee" is easier to pronounce than "slash twenty-four". Ease of use
> > trumps open standards yet again :)
>
> Nobody was talking. "/24" is easier to type than "class C". No
> trumps! Everybody loses!
I just write/say "C" unless the meaning would be ambiguous.
> How many people learn about networks from certification courses or
> in school, anyway? It was always my impression that people learnt
> mainly by listening to other people.
>
> If networking on the front lines is an informal oral tradition more
> than it is a taught science, then perhaps it's natural for obsolete
> terminology to continue to be "taught" long after it stopped having
> any relevance.
I'd bet most of the customers I deal with learned networking from OS manuals or
CCNA study books, all of which still teach classful addressing as the primary
method. All of the ones I work with use the term "C" or "class C" to refer to a
/24, and all are noticeably slower when dealing with non-/24 masks.
The point of communication is to get an idea across; if most of the people you
communicate with don't understand slash notation, then you use terms they're
familiar with even if they're imprecise or inaccurate.
I think NANOG's ISP-centric membership may skew the perception of our lexicon's
state. Most network operators are not ISPs.
S
