Re: Reserved addresses in the SSM range

[Thomas Marshall Eubanks <tme@21rst-century.com>]

Jeremy Hall wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am finding it difficult to know why one would wish to reserve addresses.
>
> _J
>
>

Dear Jeremy;

   Which kind of reservation ?

   At the IETF, the proposal was that a small number of addresses in 232/8 be reserved
for special purposes, "just in case,'" although no-one really seemed to know what those might be.
I regard this as not likely to be useful, although not too objectionable either.

   If you're talking about GLOP type addresses, I think that there is something to be said for this, in the
sense of avoiding MAC address collisions in ethernet type networks. Clearly, if everyone uses
232.0.0.1 as their favorite SSM address, this is asking for trouble. Rather that
use a random address, using your GLOP address (mapped to 232/8) would make sense IMHO. It would be
cleaner, and it might help in identifying the source of errant multicasts. This
could be done informally without involving IANA by just making it recommended.


                                 Regards
                                 Marshall Eubanks


T.M. Eubanks
Multicast Technologies, Inc
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