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From: MILLS@USC-ISID.ARPA
Newsgroups: mod.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <8512121830.AA14973@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thu, 12-Dec-85 12:41:53 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8512121830.AA14973
Posted: Thu Dec 12 12:41:53 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 14-Dec-85 03:51:06 EST
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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Approved: tcp-ip@sri-nic.arpa

Folks,

The issue is prominent on the agenda for the next GADS meeting on 16-17
January.

It should be emphasized that immediate short-term relief can also result from
an agressive campaign to use subnets, as described in RFC940 and RFC950.
Subnets allow the internal structure of large communities of LANs, such as in
use at MIT, CMU, Stanford and here, to be hidden from the Internet system at
large. However, not all software implementations support a subnet feature, in
particular Berkeley Unix 4.2bsd ex box.

It would obviously be to great advantage either to retrofit subnet code in the
4.2bsd systems or to upgrade to 4.3bsd, which has that code. However, in the
case of some popular workstations, including Sun and Apollo, this is not
possible without the manufacturer's committment and support. Casual inspection
of the gateway tables reveals several instances where a gateway to a LAN
community lists a single class-B network together with up to several class-C
networks, lending weight to the conjecture that the primary reason for the
proliferation in class-C networks is to support just those workstations.

I conclude that an effective way to manage at least the short-term problem is
to actively encourage the upgrade of LAN software to support subnets. It
should be possible to do this via the various user groups in response to
administrative directives. I also conclude support for subnets be written into
any new procurements.

Dave
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