Enough already - or - "The Further Adventures of Net 3"
Mike St. Johns
Net 3 is registered to GE. They have every right to use that number!
I screwed up!
Now on the flip side - there are at least a dozen organizations who
have at one time or another picked their network numbers out of thin
air and at least 2 of these have eventually come on line on the
Internet. One of these was a duplicate of a number already assigned -
small problem! These are the ones I've know about - I have no idea
how many other random nets are out there lurking.
I can't stress enough the importance of getting your own private and
personal network number and not using such numbers as 127.x.x.x or the
number that SUN lists in its documentation. So give me a break when I
(or someone else) questions the validity of a net number - the routing
space you save may be your own!
Mike
Bob Sutterfield
>I can't stress enough the importance of getting your own private and
>personal network number and not using such numbers as 127.x.x.x or
>the number that SUN lists in its documentation.
Amen.
One of the departments on campus was late converting to OSU's Class B
address scheme, staying with the numbers that Sun had so graciously
provided them for far longer than anyone else around had. Of course,
their users complained to our operators that "I can get from our
department to yours, why are your machines so broken that I can't get
from your machines back to ours?"
I recently attended a Sun Educational Services class on the system
administrative differences when upgrading to SunOS 4.* from 3.*. In
the discussion regarding network configurations, I couldn't convince
the instructor that she should encourage people to get a real number
and use it, right off the bat. "But it's just a little company!"
"They'll be connected someday." "But they can just change over if
they ever want to get connected!" "By that time they'll have a lot
more than the few hosts you just sold them and it will be a real
hassle." She wouldn't be persuaded, and I looked to the assembled
gathering like a voice crying in the wilderness. Then there was the
issue of the frustration of people trying to pit a nameserver vs YP...
Mamas, don't let your children grow up to do like them folks done! If
you're using IP, get your own network number from the start. That's
why there's IP in the first place: so that you can talk to the entire
rest of the world. Save yourself muchos headaches later on.
-=-
Zippy sez, --Bob
Don't hit me!! I'm in the Twilight Zone!!!
Roy Smith
> I recently attended a Sun Educational Services class [...] I couldn't
> convince the instructor that she should encourage people to get a real
> number and use it, right off the bat.
Perhaps there should be a permanently assigned class-C bogon-net
number. All the gateways would know to just drop any packet destined to or
from any host on bogon-net. Machines would come out of the box configured
to be on bogon-net, and/or the setup documentation would suggest that if
you don't have a real number, just use this one (perhaps without specifying
that is it the bogon-net, so as not to scare people off).
As long as you are not connected and have your own private ethernet
with a few hosts on it and no IP gateways, life is fine. Once you connect
up, you have to change over to make the outside gateways talk to you, but
at least you limit the damage you do to yourself. Much better to have a
gateway drop your bogonograms then to think you are somebody else. Anybody
care to guess how many net 192.9.200's there are out there? Also, if you
are a network administrator and you see a packet coming in from bogon-net,
you are instantly alerted that somebody new came on the net and didn't get
a real net number. Much better than to trying to figure out why it
suddenly looks like somebody from Sun just plugged into your ethernet.
--
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!r...@uunet.uu.net
"The connector is the network"
kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent W. England)
>at least you limit the damage you do to yourself. Much better to have a
>gateway drop your bogonograms then to think you are somebody else. Anybody
>--
>Roy Smith, System Administrator
>Public Health Research Institute
I have not seen "bogonograms" before. Has Dave Mills
authorized the use of this term?
Kent England [is :-) really needed here?]
Vernon Schryver
> Perhaps there should be a permanently assigned class-C bogon-net
> number. All the gateways would know to just drop any packet destined to or
> from any host on bogon-net. Machines would come out of the box configured
> to be on bogon-net, and/or the setup documentation would suggest that if
> --
> Roy Smith, System Administrator
> Public Health Research Institute
> {allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!r...@uunet.uu.net
In the dark ages, SGI shipped machines with default host files naming a
brand new, out of the box machine as 'IRIS' on net 89. As a result,
there are no doubt many network islands running with net #89 (or 49, but
that is a different though similar story). Some time ago, in a fit of
embarrassment and remorse, I registered a class-C network for SGI to
serve exactly this purpose. At that time, I petitioned the Gods for an
official solution. In Their wisdom, though no doubt not because of my
unworthy request, They declared that host 192.0.2.1 on the official
test network should be used.
Since then, it has become fairly elaborate. An IRIS comes named
'192.0.2.1 IRIS' on its disks, tapes, and even in NVRAM. When the
PROM's, bootp (RFC-951) server, and various "system administration"
tools notice the bogus number, they complain or do something else
reasonable sounding.
If I misunderstood the Gods, I hope that someone will enlighten me.
Vernon Schryver
Silicon Graphics
v...@sgi.com
Roy Smith
> I have not seen "bogonograms" before. Has Dave Mills
> authorized the use of this term?
To the best of my knowledge, I made the term up. Did I do
something wrong? Should I write an RFC?
--
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
Mi...@udel.edu
I suppose I should respond. To be honest, I don't invent half the
fractured netspeak I'm kidded about - I usually see or hear something
quaintly apt floating in the swamps and feed it to the alligators. So
far as I know, I first heard "bogon" from the crew at U Maryland, but
who knows where it had been floating before that. As far as the Millspeak
contribution to the netspeak dictionary that can be documented, I do
claim PING (Packet InterNet Groper), the first documented occurance
of which passed my lips in 1980. The notion of alligators swimming in the
swamps was born about then and even before the famous line (was it
Alexander Haig) "When we are up to our ass in alligators, maybe we
should remember we're here to drain the swamp."
Posted on my wall is Pogo's famous line "We have met the enemy and he
is us." There are lots of other famous quotes there, too, from Scagliary,
Shakespeare, Churchill, Goethe and Vint Cerf.
Dave