Private/Public

“Private” addresses turn out to be the general case, and “public” addresses are a specific kind of Private Address. This was totally unexpected, and I (John Day) am sure is not going to be popular among those whose utopian desires out­ strip their scientific discipline. But this is consistent with the world we now find ourselves, where potentially everyone owns their own network, not just large corporations or governments. It appears now that the idea of the global public address that everyone has to have was an artifact of artificial constraints of early technology that are no longer necessary. One can break out of the Tyranny of being accessible within a single global address space: one more blow for freedom, privacy, and security, another blow against the Orwellian tyranny of having to be always connected to the public net­work.

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DAY, John D., 2008. Patterns in network architecture: a return to fundamentals. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Education. ISBN 978-0-13-225242-3, p. 380.