Vendor Reservation Form: Fill & Download for Free

I don’t know about most of the US, but in Louisiana there is a type of sale of an immovable known as a “Sale with Right of Redemption” (or “vente á reméré”) in which the Vendor reserves the right to take back the property sold from Vendee. This right of redemption must be expressed in the act of sale in the form of a clause or provision reserving this right to the Vendor. This right may not be reserved for more than 10 years, at which time it prescribes.

First, some background:Originally, IP (v4) addresses were broken into “classes.” The upper bits of the first octet indicated the network class, which implied how a specific address should be split into a network and host portion. These bits dictated how the address should be interpreted by routers.There were three classes of networks, A, B, and C, which were “blocks” of addresses to accommodate networks of different sizes (see footnotes).Every single IP address has to be globally unique across the whole Internet. This means that only one of each address can exist on the whole network. As a result, address “blocks” had to be assigned to end user networks to be locally managed. These days, IP address space for the public internet gets handed out by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, but in Ye Olde Days, Jon Postel personally managed the address space allocations.So, how did certain special use addresses come about?Loopback interfaces were created on hosts to assure that there was a place for IP traffic to go even if all interfaces were down, or to be able to test IP traffic without any worries about hardware or driver issues associated with a network interface. The address assigned was called Localhost, and the address chosen was just the last of the class A networks, 127.0.0.0/8. In retrospect, that was a wasteful choice, but who knew at the time? Since the upper bits were easy to check, convenience ruled the day over long-term vision. So it goes.Stan Hanks digs a little deeper into the history of the loopback interface at Stan Hanks's answer to Who first established 127.0.0.1 as the loopback address, and why?The 10.0.0.0/8 network was originally assigned to MILNET and the Defense Data Network (DDN). A LOT of early Internet devices had 10.x.x.x networks hardcoded into the software. In the mid-1990s, those networks were shut down and moved into other forms, but the 10.x.x.x space was considered “poisoned” since so many non-MILNET/DDN systems had hardcoded configurations that continued to send traffic to those long-defunct networks. To avoid trouble, that network would never be assigned on the public Internet again.As IPv4 address exhaustion took hold, a need for non-routable addresses for private networks arose. At first, people picked random IP address spaces, but then they ran the risk of failing to reach any network that their randomly-chosen space overlapped with. To address the problem, RFC 1597 (and its ultimate successor RFC1918), Address Allocation for Private Internets, proposed reserving a number of specific IP networks for use as private networks. That RFC set aside a Class A, Class B, and Class C space. For Class A, the poisoned 10.0.0.0/8 MILNET/DDN space seemed a natural choice. For class B and Class C, the next available unassigned blocks at the time of the RFC authoring were assigned by Jon Postel. For the Class B networks, the space happened to be the 172.16.0.0/12 block (15 class B blocks, 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255). For the class C space, that happened to be 192.168.0.0/16 block, (255 class C blocks, 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255). Most consumer router vendors I have seen use 192.168.x.0/24. Many use 192.168.1.x, or 192.168.0.x. I have seen some that use 192.168.123.x, and others that use 192.168.2.x. Personally, I set all of my home routers to 192.168.10.x, so I can use my home network on the WAN side of any home router I am testing with using its default addresses.Some vendors use the 10.x.x.x address space, and a silly minority use the 172.16.x.x address space. After all, if you’re going to use an address space that is too large for your device to handle, go all the way and use 10.x.x.x to let people type less.The 1.x.x.x and 2.x.x.x address space ended up being very problematic, since lots of people had reflexively used that space for testing without coordinating with anyone. It had been left as a reserved space from nearly the beginning of IPv4, for that reason. Geoff Huston researched just how poisoned that space was in his paper Traffic in Network 1.0.0.0/8. Based on that research, some of the 1.0.0.0/8 network was released to be used for real traffic, isolating some of the most poisoned parts of the space. Despite the poisoning, Cloudflare used their extensive content delivery network to set up an Anycast DNS server at 1.1.1.1 (https://1.1.1.1/), serving as both a DNS server and packet sink. Seems to be working for them.You can read more about special Reserved IP addresses.Footnotes:00000000 - Class A.That was 0 - 127. First octet network, the rest host.10000000 - Class B.That was 128 - 191. First two octets network, the rest host.11000000 - Class C.That was 192 -223. First three octets network, the rest host.11100000 - Class D. (Added later)That was 224 - 239. Used for multicasting.11110000 - Class E.That was 240 - 255. Reserved for future use.

The future for the retail industry, just as it is for many other industries, is not a question of physical or digital but rather a convergence of physical with digital.Sure, the innovative eCommerce/online space is getting all the press and publicity of late, giving it the impression that it is an all-conquering inevitability in our lives, but there still remains needs that people have that are best satisfied by the physical presence of people in a physical space. Whether purchased online or in the physical space, customers still want their needs met as an outstanding personalised experience that is delivered in the most convenient way.Think about the vast difference in experience between being live at a sporting, music or cultural event compared to watching the streaming of the same event on digital devices, to understand the competitive advantage that physical has over digital, given the right product and the appropriate form of delivery. When people want the experience that only a physical presence can provide, price significantly loses its influence.In the retail industry, consider the difference between the 'typical' retailer and the shopping conducted in an Apple store with its stylish and laid-back design and floor-plan where customers get to try out innovative technology and are helped by well trained, enthusiastic employees who focus primarily on making the customer experience a very enjoyable one. "Happy customers spend more"Yet, this retail innovation that Apple is employing is not new, it's just new to this generation of shoppers and retailers. It's the re-innovation of 'good old fashioned customer service' that dominated retail 100 years ago but which has degenerated over time because the industry followed a cost-saving/efficiency model rather than continuing with a value-adding one, and so it has become something that an online process can so easily disrupt today ... which it has.I'm old enough to have experienced department store retailing at its best and I can tell you that back then, shopping was a genuine pleasure, it was entertaining and socially engaging, where customers experienced extra-ordinary gratification and it was nothing like today's general view of the physical space retailing being seen as a burden, a headache, a battle with crushing crowds, where stores promote endless shopping seasons and perennial discounts.Retail back then was a relationship not a process. No wonder the physical space retailers today are struggling for relevance and market share against the disruptive impact of online retailers. See it's far easier to digitise and disrupt a process than a relationship, so as a minimum, physical space retailers should be emphasising their great competitive advantage with their ability to deliver memorable experiences and so build and maintain human relationships with their customers.Perhaps the greatest innovation that physical retailers can employ is to re-discover, re-emphasise and deliver once more that "personal service, attention to detail, and, above all, self-fulfilling visions of the good life" that the PwC’s Annual report describes in their "Total Retail 2015: Retailers and the Age of Disruption" [1]This re-innovation would quite possibly follow Apple's[2] very 'value-add human vs cost-driven process' emphasis which:invests significantly in staff trainingprojects empathy with the customer in all that it doesis consistent in the depth and breath of its service charterit empowers staff to make their primary target as 'customer happiness' rather than just sales results, because "Happy customers spend more"Other innovations to supplement the re-innovation of 'good old fashioned customer service' would include:Give to online what belongs online: There is no doubt that some products from the retailer's assortment can be sold more efficiently and effectively online and this should be embraced by the physical space retailers via the innovations of websites, eCommerce and mobile technologies. This would allow for greater concentration in the physical space of the products that customers prefer to buy in the physical space which include those products that need to be seen, touched and tried-on or they require certainty and expert advice about the customised fit and suitability or they are the products that are highly perishable. A niche localised component added to the assortment offer would also heighten relevancy for the physical space retailer especially if the addition was in response to online crowd-sourced survey results.Buy online - free pick up in store: Customers get to access a wider choice and keener prices online but they don't want to suffer their pet hates of online service with its delivery charges and having to wait for the goods to arrive and miss out on the 'retail joy' of instant gratification. Then, if the retailer has followed the re-innovation of customer service mentioned above, there is a high probability that the visit to the store to pick up the goods, will actually results in additional sales.Provide the enjoyable in-store customer experience but let customers buy online. This could be done with small footprint in-store kiosks that allows customers to purchase and download digital products like movies, eBooks and computer software while being supported by highly trained and customer service focused staff. Perhaps 3D printing in-store as a service could also be added to this mix as it fully develops its technologies.[3]Utilise social and mobile technologies to create customer engagement, by promoting worthwhile content and providing announcements that causes the customer to want to visit the website or store or both. For example, offering time-limited specials exclusively to followers, rewards the followers and encourages others to also become followers and so growing their physical retail market reach.Employ technology that helps employees recognise and remember customer details which will help build relationships and sustainability for the relationship-based physical retailer. These may involve the engagement of face recognition software or simply providing a more up-to-date and accessible customer relationship management systems to service staff.Install an inventory integrated Point of Sale (POS) system - While POS systems have been available to for a while, few retailers maximise their use as a responsive system for merchandise management. An inventory integrated POS allows retailers to set alerts for items selling out, easily add new items, manage any customer back-orders and auto-generate purchase orders to send to vendors/reserve. This system would help keep merchandise for slow sellers at a minimum and while supporting best sellers with increased floor space and back-up volumes. This would allow retailers to keep expensive main street retail space at a minimum with the possibility of a backup reserve in a less expensive upstairs or second-tier location near-by.Watch and learn from the digital retailer Amazon with their physical space retail strategy and innovations. This is something that I have already covered here Peter Baskerville's answer to What can other retailers learn from Amazon's new brick and mortar book store? and deals primarily with how you leverage brick and mortar for your online business and vice-versa. It also identifies the need for physical space retailers to maximise the value of customer referrals, of putting prices in the cloud and re-emphasising the critical importance of display, 'on selling' and localising assortments.I believe that the innovation that will most help physical space retailers to stay relevant in 2016 and maintain their market share will be centred around the ability of the retailer to deliver outstanding personalised experience for the customer in the most convenient way. This is most likely to be delivered by the re-innovation of 'good old fashioned service' while seamlessly coordinating the interactive customer flow between the store’s mobile app and website technologies with the physical store environment.Footnotes[1] https://www.pwc.com/sg/en/publications/assets/total-retail-2015.pdf[2] How To Be a Genius: This Is Apple's Secret Employee Training Manual[3] 5 Ways That 3-D Printing is Going to Shake Up Retail