Karl Auer wrote:
The "random" one allows for swift, bureaucracy-free self-allocation. The
more important it is to you that your allocation be unique, the more
careful you will be to choose a truly random one.
If it is that important, you'd prefer a managed solution, not a truly
random one.
The chance that any
random prefix will conflict with any chosen prefix is very, very small.
The chance that two conflicting prefixes would belong to entities that
will ever actually interact is even smaller. Makes it an interesting
question as to whether the managed range is really necessary at all.
1) While the chance of conflict is small, it is not non-existent, and
when the interaction does occur and a conflict does arise, there may be
huge costs involved. Random is fine for small deployments. It is a
horrifying prospect for a 500+ subnet network.
2) Managing non-globally routed addressing is easy and doesn't require a
lot of overhead. IANA itself could manage it, as it does all other
globally unique numbers. First come, first serve. Have a nice day. I
enjoy my unique enterprise oid. Why shouldn't I enjoy my own unique
non-globally routed address space identifier? There shouldn't be a need
for justification of the identifier (or services such as whois), so
pawning it off on a RIR seems silly.
Jack
