This is a fantasy. No one with any level of scale does this anymore. In fact modern Kubernetes environments allocate a dynamic IP per instance of a service on a given network. Modern workloads are ephemeral and able to move from server to server as demand increases and decreases.
The very site you are reading right now lives on ephemeral nodes that come and go based on daily demand. This allows resources to be allocated where they can be best used and spun down when unneeded. This is also true of network routes and DHCP allocations on larger networks. NOT having this capability means you can’t, for example, drain customer-end equipment to prepare for a maintenance by having dhcp give them addresses connected to another device - instead you have to take them offline or play games at layer 1 with ARP to “convince” them their upstream is now this new device instead.
requiring a static IP, internally and externally, for endpoints imagines a world where devices never move around, where dynamic relocation isn’t a thing, and where capacities remain constant. The internet outgrew this in the 2000s as mobile data and devices became a thing and we got really, really good at capacity planning, even in bare-metal datacenters.
All of this means users get less interruption in service, not more, and don’t end up with shit routing every time they go on a road trip or your local ISP decides to maintain their gear. “Does not serve the user” indeed.
Fair points all. I intended “IP block” not individual static addresses; the current dynamism and fluidity of network services has some serious potential downsides for me. What I do requires a very particular scale to have value, so I suppose I’m looking for the solution with highly controlled variation, so that as little of what I do sits on third-party machines as possible. Different world, I guess…
True but it doesn’t stop clueless politicians from voting for dangerous and draconian legislation into law - see our own Investigatory Powers Act that includes this lovely little thing called the Technical Capability Notice (TCN) which can get slapped on any telecomms operator and force them to have ‘a little bit of encryption’ so it can be intercepted. The beauty of it is the operator can never share they’ve received such a notice… I’m like a broken record that keeps repeating when things like this happen because the IP Act still makes me intensely fucking furious.
