On 11/19/10 12:45 PM, William Herrin wrote: > On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 9:07 PM, Richard Hartmann > <richih.mailingl...@gmail.com> wrote: >> as most of you are aware, there is no definite, canonical name for the >> two bytes of IPv6 addresses between colons. This forces people to use >> a description like I just did instead of a single, specific term. > > Hi Richard, > > I have an anti-naming proposal: Allow users to place the colons > -anywhere- or even leave them out altogether without changing the > semantics of the IPv6 address. > > The colons are there for readability purposes only. They have no > special significance and should not be elevated to significance by > naming the parts of the address they delineate. Treat them specially > and some fools will attach importance to arranging tasks on two-byte > boundaries. > > The meaningful boundaries in the protocol itself are nibble and /64. > If you want socially significant boundaries, add /12, /32 and /48.
It is possible and desirable to be able to describe any mask length between /0 and /128. the /64 is an important demarcation point for subnets but everything shorter than that will appear in your routing table. > Regards, > Bill Herrin > > >