[wmf]

Ethernet switching isn't broken. STP works fine at reasonable scale (as long as you leave it on) and 1980s history isn't relevant now. Obviously routing is better than switching and we can now do routing to the host with affordable "L3 switches", but switching is still usable.

[icedchai]

I knew several colleges that had the entire campus on a flat /16 network. Dozens of buildings, 1000's of computers. It worked fine. Well, except for the "no firewall" part (this was mid 90's.)

[simtel20]

That was fine as long as the network was thinnet or thicknet as most universities probably were, because a well planned network would start at the hub and extend out and terminate. When networks became more based on 10baseT and you could add devices by just plugging a very cheap hub into a wall socket, and then plug another hub into that, for cheap, you could get loops more easily, and degraded broadcast quality, and that kills the entire network.

[icedchai]

Thinnet / thicknet were a maintenance nightmare though, compared to 10baseT. One loose tap or terminator would kill a whole segment.

[simtel20]

Yes, it was indeed! But the PITA-ness and need for termination meant that once it was planned and implemented, it was rarely monkeyed with for a while.

[p_l]

MIT originally was single /8 network (Class A from before CIDR), however they had it subdivided with routers AFAIK pretty soon.

CISCO had a lot of early customers among universities because dedicated box ran better than random unix workstation pulled out from other duties (or even sharing them) running RIP and the like.

[p_l]

The very reason we're talking about IPv4 vs IPv6 is because of 1980 (and 80s, 1980) history, concerning people getting convinced that the temporary solution that IPv4 was supposed to be will be won't need more than obviously short 32bits and will be replaced with something better before wide adoption.