title: Reasons behind the choice of 172.16/192.168?
body: <p>It is a known fact that there are three blocks of IPv4 Addresses that were chosen to be reserved for private networks:</p>
  <pre><code> 10.0.0.0        -   10.255.255.255  (10/8 prefix)
   172.16.0.0      -   172.31.255.255  (172.16/12 prefix)
   192.168.0.0     -   192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)
  </code></pre>
  <p>(as specified by <a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1918" rel="nofollow noreferrer">RFC 1918</a>). However, although I can sort of see why 10.0.0.0 would be a natural choice, I can think of no particular reason why 172.16.0.0 and 192.168.0.0 were chosen among all the possibilities. I tried to google about this but got nothing, and the RFC document did not provide any explanation either. Was it really just a random decision?</p>