On 15-Feb-12 08:42, Dave CROCKER wrote: > As I recall, there was essentially no experience with variable length > addresses -- and certainly no production experience -- then or even by > the early 90s, when essentially the same decision was made and for > essentially the same reason.[1] > > It's not that variable length addressing is a bad idea; it's that it > didn't get the research work and specification detail it needed, for > introduction into what had become critical infrastructure. What I > recall during the IPng discussions of the early 90s was promotion of > the /concept/ of variable length addressing but without the > experiential base to provide assurance we knew how it would operate.
The problem with variable-length addressing that, in practice, one needs to specify a maximum length. The result, therefore, is that you don't have variable-length addresses at all but rather fixed-length addresses with a shorthand encoding for unused bits. S -- Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
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