Tom Smyth <tom.smyth@wirelessconnect.eu> wrote:

> so Arista and Cisco say area id is a 32 bit value  0-(2^32)-1   expressed as a number
> or dotted decimal IP 

Sure, but "dotted decimal IP" is a pretty vague term, because everyone inherited
the same flawed pre-cidr conversion functions.  That vagueness is the problem.

So therefore it seems more important that we know it isn't used in practice.
That seems to have been checked, and I think we can rush ahead now.  Also,
if someone runs into this, their non-strict area can easily be edited into a
the strict numeric form, so there's no real hazard here, the whole 32-bit numeric
range remains useable.