> From: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com> > The design error was made in the late 1970s, when Louis Pouzin's advice > that catenet addresses should be variable length, with a format prefix, > was not taken during the design of IPv4.
Ironically, TCP/IP had variable length addresses put in _twice_, and they were removed both times! (You can't make this stuff up! :-) - TCPv1 (no separate TCP and IP at that point) had variable lenth addresses of up to 15 4-bit nibbles - TCP/IPv3 had variable lenth addresses of up to 15 8-bit bytes (but the 'network number' part was supposed to be only the first byte, exactly like IPv4 in its early days) This latter change happened shortly before I joined the project, otherwise no doubt I would have strenously objected! :-) Noel _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@ietf.org https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf