Re:So Long Last /8 and Thanks For All the Allocations
by bsagdiyev on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @11:19AM
(#16913302)
The allocation is for equipment within the packet radio network and, if you announce BGP, for your gateway connecting that equipment to the wider internet. I'm happy for UCSD to keep this block but I may be biased due to my participation in the network and general vicinity (~10mi) to the school itself.
Re:So Long Last /8 and Thanks For All the Allocations
by stordoff on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @09:55PM
(#16918151)
> The fact something looks "dark" on that plot doesn't tell you anything about how much of the space is allocated.
A lot will also depend on when the scan is done. For instance, the University of Cambridge has 131.111/16 and hands it out to student devices, so if you scan during a vacation a large portion of it will look empty.
Re:So Long Last /8 and Thanks For All the Allocations
by 3pt14159 on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @11:03AM
(#16913148)
I had this thought too, but do we realistically know anything about what types of devices are likely to respond to ping? What's the alternative? Try to initiate a TCP handshake to every port of every IP? How many servers are in UDP listen only mode or whitelist IPs to whats on their network?
Re:So Long Last /8 and Thanks For All the Allocations
by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @11:10AM
(#16913206)
The alternative is to switch to IPv6. There is no requirement to offer any particular publicly reachable service on an IP address, a machine or device might be completely firewalled off from directly communicating with the public internet, and it is still perfectly acceptable for it to have a globally unique IP address, so it is ultimately pointless to try and measure "the real utilization" using packets.
The site linked by that many years old Reddit post says that in fact loads of this space is allocated, to specific people, in this case "Hams", I see alphanumeric designations which I seem to remember Hams call "handles" as well as geographic locations and some human names.
Is the Amateur Radio "Ham" community disorganised? Yup. Does that magically mean they're not using this address space and so it's "unallocated"? Nope.