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According to all documentation, class E IPs - those in the range 240.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 - are for research purposes only and should never be assigned or used. And yet, according to a review of access logs in a site I run, upwards of 70% of visits are coming from IPs in this "forbidden" range. Some tools break when applied to IPs in this range, so I am a bit concerned.

I was able to send private messages to a few users. Of those who responded, they disclaimed any knowledge of what could be going on. Both American and European users were affected, and they claimed both hardwired connections and mobile connections.

So, this is a situation where the behavior defined in the formal document and the behavior exhibited in the real world differ. What does it mean to be seeing a lot of traffic from these 'forbidden' IPs?

sgfit
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    fit your question, so it can be answered. currently it's like you hang on documentation that is now 40 years old. – djdomi Dec 26 '22 at 19:29
  • Where exactly are you seeing these addresses? Can it be that your local hosting company is doing something weird, because these addresses indeed aren’t used on the internet. – Sander Steffann Dec 26 '22 at 20:25

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To probably explain the down votes :

Class E IP ranges do not exist any more.

Classfull network addressing is an obsolete network addressing architecture that was used in the Internet from 1981 until the introduction of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) in 1993.

Those IP ranges are currently classified as Reserved for future use (formerly "Class E") : source https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xhtml

No explanation as to why you see them in the wild.

diya
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