RFC 1918 (rfc1918) - Page 1 of 9
Address Allocation for Private Internets
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group Y. Rekhter
Request for Comments: 1918 Cisco Systems
Obsoletes: 1627, 1597 B. Moskowitz
BCP: 5 Chrysler Corp.
Category: Best Current Practice D. Karrenberg
RIPE NCC
G. J. de Groot
RIPE NCC
E. Lear
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
February 1996
Address Allocation for Private Internets
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the
Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
1. Introduction
For the purposes of this document, an enterprise is an entity
autonomously operating a network using TCP/IP and in particular
determining the addressing plan and address assignments within that
network.
This document describes address allocation for private internets. The
allocation permits full network layer connectivity among all hosts
inside an enterprise as well as among all public hosts of different
enterprises. The cost of using private internet address space is the
potentially costly effort to renumber hosts and networks between
public and private.
2. Motivation
With the proliferation of TCP/IP technology worldwide, including
outside the Internet itself, an increasing number of non-connected
enterprises use this technology and its addressing capabilities for
sole intra-enterprise communications, without any intention to ever
directly connect to other enterprises or the Internet itself.
The Internet has grown beyond anyone's expectations. Sustained
exponential growth continues to introduce new challenges. One
challenge is a concern within the community that globally unique
address space will be exhausted. A separate and far more pressing
concern is that the amount of routing overhead will grow beyond the
Rekhter, et al Best Current Practice