Area routers should actually be at the top end of the range ie 9.1023 and down from there. That is because higher numbered nodes take priority over lower numbered ones with the same priority. That way if a rogue area router appears it won t take over the routing, unless deliberately configured to do so. Regards Rob From: owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE [mailto:owner-hecnet at Update.UU.SE] On Behalf Of Cory Smelosky Sent: 08 January 2013 22:26 To: hecnet at Update.UU.SE Subject: [HECnet] Request for comments on subdividing area 9 Hello! The current way I allocate node numbers is in sequential order and it's getting tremendously messy and difficult to manage, so I am going to come up with a plan to divide things more cleanly and I'm looking for feedback. I'm thinking: 9.1-9.21 for administration/control purposes (area routers and so forth), subdividing the area in to geographic areas (areas of ~250 each initially, the others can be further subdivided as needed), and then subdividing those geographic regions by purpose. so: (apologies about this chart being absolutely atrocious and useless, it functioned largely as stress relief) 9.1-9.21 | V relief OHIO (9.22-9.271)-----|----------------|-------------------| | | | | | V V V V V (VMS) (PDP-11) (PDP-10) (OTHER) (WORKSTATION) 9. (22-.72) (73-123) (124-174) (175-225) (226-278) And repeat for other regions. Should I subdivide further? What could I use instead of OTHER? Should I break up the area differently? Further suggestions? Should I put physical hardware as a sub-sub-subdivision, its own tertiary level (in place of OTHER), or not differentiate them at all? Let me know your thoughts.