Re: Home VPN - Hamachi

[Ian Lowe <ianlowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2005-12-17 at 17:57 +0000, Shmern wrote:
> like ? Surely it's a private tunnel using that ip, the only machines
> to see
> that ip are the participants in the VPN ?

It only takes IANA to assign part of the 5. address space properly on
the internet, and you have routing issues.

I'm with Andy on this one, having spent a long time trying to resolve
issues on a customer's network caused by some genius deciding that
"no-one is using the 128.* address space"... (which was allocated
about
4 years after their network was configured this way)

It may be a nice and easy system, but it's in the wrong - Hamachi have
no right to be using an entire Class A address range that hasn't been
assigned to them - and the usual provisio that this network isn't
exposed to the internet doesn't apply here - the hamachi vpn connection
doesn't become your default route for all traffic, so your PC has to
make a routing decision - all 5.*.*.* traffic gets pushed over the
hamachi link - which makes you blind to that portion of the internet
if/when IANA allocates it.

if they had even picked a Class A above 64 - RFC1644 says that those
will remain reserved indefinitely - 5. on the other hand is much more
likely to come into play in the next few years as we continue to chew
through the IPv4 space.

It's one of these things - unless IANA takes legal action against
Hamachi, it's unlikely to stop, and in the meantime if it helps people
run easy VPNs (although, frankly, a VPN isn't exactly rocket science) I
guess there is some value...

just remember - the next time you see a story on wired about the
"Black
Holes on the Internet" or find yourself inexplicably unable to reach
certain websites... people doing *precisely* what Hamachi has done are
the reason why!

Ian.