Subnetting Rationale

[Todd Vander Does <MATH.AMS.ORG">tvd]

We are considering subnetting to provide a logical distribution of our
hosts.  We do not have a current space crunch.  We will be increasing
from 75 hosts to 100 in the next year.  The proposal is to create five
subnets dividing them according to one of two schemes.  The first is
to divide them by system style - Computers, X terminals, PCs, Misc.
The second proposal is to create subnets for each organizational
division, e.g, Executive, Fiscal, Publishing, Marketing.  Under this
organization of assigning IP addresses we will be able to view our
host tables with greater comprehension.  We will be able to keep new
hosts organized, rather than having Visual X terminals scattered among
Macs or NCDs.

There is a loyal opposition to this plan that believe that subnetting is
for functional purposes, not organizational purposes.  Their stance is
that organizing host files by type is unnecessary.  Assign the next number
to the next host added to the net.  Use subnetting if the address space
gets too full, to provide filtering or some other concrete objective.
Use tools to provide different views of the host tables, e.g.,
grep Visual /etc/hosts.

If any of you have positions or would like to comment on these positions
please do.  If there is any useful summary, I'll post it.

Todd Vander Does			American Mathematical Society
Systems Programmer			P.O. Box 6248
(401) 455-4031				Providence, RI 02940-6248
tvdmath.ams.org