I handed over TW $1,000 (U.S. $40) to the cab driver and checked
into my hotel, asking for a 4:45 A.M. wakeup call. It was 9 P.M..
While waiting for my baked dried squid with chili sauce to come up
from room service, I read about
SEEDNET, half of the Taiwanese
Internet.
As with many countries, the Internet was split among multiple
ministries. Education ran TANET for the universities and the commercial SEEDNET was run out of industry. The namespace was
split between the two groups.
What was interesting about SEEDNET (but certainly not brought
out in the paper I read) was that SEEDNET used a block of 249
Class C addresses. SEEDNET was connected to JVNCnet, which in
turn was connected to the NSFNET backbone.
Having a country take 249 separate Class C addresses was an
interesting illustration of the problem of the
IP address space.
Class
B addresses were being rationed because of exhaustion of that portion of the address space, but giving out multiple Class C addresses
could put an additional strain on the routers, already working hard
to keep up with close to 5,000 known network addresses.
At the time of my visit to Taipei, SEEDNET was physically connected to JVNCnet, but the SEEDNET world was not announced
over the NSFNET backbone to other regionals. If you attempted to
connect to SEEDNET from JVNCnet, the routers would know how
to route the packet. If you tried to do so from another regional,
packets would disappear.
The SEEDNET problem was certainly just a temporary one, but
it showed the strains that were beginning to appear on the routing
infrastructure of the Internet. Older networks, such as the MILNET,
had even more problems.
The MILNET routers could only handle routing information for
3,750 networks. Since the NSFNET had over 5,000 networks, the
MILNET administrators had to decide which routes to accept and
which to ignore. The decision had been that all international networks that were not associated with peer military organizations
were cut off inside the MILNET. The Australian AARNet, for example, could no longer communicate directly with hosts inside the
MILNET.
Cutting off people who probably wouldn't talk to you is certainly a rational response to the problem of saturating the Internet.
The problem, however, was that this didn't solve the long-term
problem of scaling the Internet. The Internet was doubling every 7
to 10 months and there were projections that the routing table size
could easily grow by an order of magnitude if nothing was done.
Address space resolution was a big issue at all the IETF meetings. One solution which was proposed was to do away with the
distinction of address classes and instead delegate arbitrary blocks
of addresses to the regional networks, which would in turn delegate
blocks to their clients.
Using blocks of addresses and delegation on the hierarchy
meant that, with suitable changes in the routing protocols, a single
network prefix and mask could be used to refer to what otherwise
might have been several hundred (or even thousand) entries in a
routing table.
I fell asleep trying to figure out why it had to be so hard to put
together an integrated global Internet. There was obviously a need
for many types of networks: the day of "the" network had long
passed. Yet, this diversity meant that the network was starting to
fragment and splinter into subsets of connectivity.
The next morning, dozing on the airplane to Hong Kong, I was
awakened by the flight attendant who presented me with a large
box with the imprint "Name Card Holder" on it. Looking around, I
saw all the other business class passengers stuffing their gifts into
carry-on bags.
I opened mine to find a handsome slab of wood with a large
blue and green ceramic duck mounted on it. Presumably, the business cards would be inserted in the beak. While this functional yet
attractive desk accessory would certainly have made an impressive
addition to my office decor, I felt that my seatmate might make better use of it. I handed my gift to him and he whisked it into his bag
before I could change my mind.