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Date:      Sun, 18 Aug 2002 02:48:55 -0700
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
To:        Alfred Pythonstein <pythonstein@hotmail.com>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org, chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Insider's scoop: Why FreeBSD is dying
Message-ID:  <3D5F6D87.76848740@mindspring.com>
References:  <F155HlM9QTfXPyGvQ3C0000b599@hotmail.com>

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Wow.

I guess I'll address the most important point that hit home for me
from that post...

Examining the headers, it looks like Hotmail has a full class "B"
(64.4/16); that's surprising.  Why the heck do they have a full
class B?!?  If you are using load balancers for distribution, then
you basically need only enough IP addresses to provide publically
accessible VIPs to the various public services you export as seperate
entities.  There's no *way* they have 65,534 (subtracting out the
unusable ones) of those!

Seems to me, you could do all of Hotmail with well under a class
C, if that.  You could *probably* do it with a /28, which is the
smallest BGP routable chunk UUNET supports.

Does this seem odd to anyone else?  Is Microsoft just an address
space pig, or what?  Do they consider the IPv4 address space as
part of the company's valuation when making a purchase decision,
or is this some legacy thing with Hotmail that no one at InterNIC
bothered to correct, and they are just "address rich" by chance
(this seems most likely, to me)?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Maybe it's just so that if a host gets RBL'ed or otherwise
blacklisted, they can switch IPs, and won't have an interruption
of email service to their customers?  If that's the case, that
implies the SPAM turnover on those things is on the other of one
65536th of the time it takes to get off a blacklist.  That would
imply they are sending an *incredible* amount of SPAM (obviously,
that assumes a single VIP, which is really unlikely, but it's
still within an order of magnitude, asuming a LocalDirector or
other load balancer.

Anyway, that's what I got from the post...

-- Terry

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