IP Addressing Fundamentals

Summary

When the IPv4 address space started to suffer under the strain of the Internet's explosive growth, the IETF responded quickly with a broad series of parallel efforts. Some of these efforts, as we've seen in this chapter, were the simplest of mechanisms. Others were remarkably complex and required years to develop. The hope was that the combination of the various short-term initiatives would buy enough time for the real solution (IPv6) to be developed. It is imperative that you appreciate the significance of many of these mechanisms. They have become so successful at recovering addresses and reducing the need for unique addresses that they have, together, become quite viable long-term solutions to the original problem of a vanishing address ...