5 ms·

how about ipv5 and we just add an extra .255 ? Im sure our kids wilk figure out a better solution... ?

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
You joke, but I’m pretty sure ipv6 suffered by removing the familiar octets system in favor of something most people can’t understand.
- apple4ever 8y ago
  Absolutely. Its so much easier to read 10.59.271.49 than 2001:ACE3:26CF:0192:6A42:18A3:018F2:3752.
- rawoke083600 8y ago
  absolutely ! I can shout an ipv4 address across the office... i cant easily do it with ipv6 :/
CydeWeys 8y ago
Assuming you're not joking, the nice thing about IPv4 is that it uses 32 bits, so you can store addresses in an unsigned int and use memory efficiently. Just adding one octet takes you up to 40 bits, which has alignment issues. You may as well go up to 64 bits (half of IPv6), which could be represented as 16 hex characters, e.g. 06A4.6E1B.12C9.95C8. That way you're kicking the can much farther down the road too.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  I always wish IPv6 had done example this -- use 64 bits. The address space is still enormous: a couple billion for every currently living person (yes, I know allocating isn't 100% efficient, but even at 0.001% efficiency, that's still tens of thousands per capita). And, the address could fit in a common word size, and be significantly more readable. As is, IPv6's one-address-per-atom-on-Earth is unnecessary, the addresses are horrendous to read, and the collapsing colon stuff is just obnoxious.
  - Dagger2 8y ago
    64 bits probably wouldn't be enough to let people avoid going into address conservation mode though. Heck, there are way too many ISPs allocating a single /64 in v6 land today, and there's far more space available in v6 today than there would be after 100+ years of your 64-bit space. Having an unnecessarily large amount of addresses is a good thing, because the alternative is to have too few addresses. You don't want to have too few addresses, because if you think v6 is taking a long time to roll out... imagine how long a replacement to it would take.
    - paulddraper 8y ago
      > Heck, there are way too many ISPs allocating a single /64 in v6 land today First, ISPs are allocating them because they can. There are enough total /64 blocks for every living person to have a couple billion blocks. Second, ISPs are allocating /64 blocks because they have to. Well, they don't have to, but there are 20 billion billion total /64 blocks. ISPs will run of capacity in their routing tables long before address blocks are exhausted. > Having an unnecessarily large amount of addresses is a good thing Agreed. Both 64-bit and 128-bit have unnecessarily large address spaces. But 32-bit is too few, though, and byte/word alignment is convenient. So 64-bit is convenient, unnecessarily large solution.
      - Dagger2 8y ago
        There's no requirement for ISPs to allocate /64 blocks. The requirement is that they allocate enough address space for all of their client's networks to use /64s. As such, all recommendations are for /56 at least (which takes up the exact same amount of space in their routing tables as /64 does: one entry). If v6 was 64 bits in total, then ISPs would need to be allocating something closer to /48s to users at a minimum... but can you really imagine ISPs giving /48s in a 64-bit space when many of those same ISPs don't even give something larger than /64 in a 128-bit space? And this is despite the fact that a /48-in-64-bits would be 256 networks of 256 IPs each, which is far smaller than a /56's 256 networks of 2^64 IPs each? We know from v4 that 256 IPs in a network is frequently too small. I'm just not convinced that 64 bits is enough, and I don't think we should expend this much effort deploying something that could be too small. Sure, it might be big enough with careful management, but I think it would be stupid to take the risk. If you were arguing for an 80 bit address space then I'd have a much harder time calling it a risk, but for some reason 80 bits is an incredibly unpopular length.
- zlynx 8y ago
  I doubt anyone cares about efficiency or I wouldn't find people storing IP addresses in JSON, as text. Unnormalized too, so IPv6 is almost guaranteed to be broken.
  - zamadatix 8y ago
    That's like saying towing capacity isn't important in semi's because you see boxes from Amazon that only weigh 25 lbs. Sure some random app might only deal with 25 lbs worth of efficiency problems but it's not the only piece of software that has to process IPs, such as a load balancer, home router (on underpowered CPUs), and ever increasing amounts of software networking.

You joke, but I’m pretty sure ipv6 suffered by removing the familiar octets system in favor of something most people can’t understand.

apple4ever 8y ago
Absolutely. Its so much easier to read 10.59.271.49 than 2001:ACE3:26CF:0192:6A42:18A3:018F2:3752.
rawoke083600 8y ago
absolutely ! I can shout an ipv4 address across the office... i cant easily do it with ipv6 :/

CydeWeys 8y ago

Assuming you're not joking, the nice thing about IPv4 is that it uses 32 bits, so you can store addresses in an unsigned int and use memory efficiently. Just adding one octet takes you up to 40 bits, which has alignment issues. You may as well go up to 64 bits (half of IPv6), which could be represented as 16 hex characters, e.g. 06A4.6E1B.12C9.95C8. That way you're kicking the can much farther down the road too.

paulddraper 8y ago
I always wish IPv6 had done example this -- use 64 bits. The address space is still enormous: a couple billion for every currently living person (yes, I know allocating isn't 100% efficient, but even at 0.001% efficiency, that's still tens of thousands per capita). And, the address could fit in a common word size, and be significantly more readable. As is, IPv6's one-address-per-atom-on-Earth is unnecessary, the addresses are horrendous to read, and the collapsing colon stuff is just obnoxious.
- Dagger2 8y ago
  64 bits probably wouldn't be enough to let people avoid going into address conservation mode though. Heck, there are way too many ISPs allocating a single /64 in v6 land today, and there's far more space available in v6 today than there would be after 100+ years of your 64-bit space. Having an unnecessarily large amount of addresses is a good thing, because the alternative is to have too few addresses. You don't want to have too few addresses, because if you think v6 is taking a long time to roll out... imagine how long a replacement to it would take.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    > Heck, there are way too many ISPs allocating a single /64 in v6 land today First, ISPs are allocating them because they can. There are enough total /64 blocks for every living person to have a couple billion blocks. Second, ISPs are allocating /64 blocks because they have to. Well, they don't have to, but there are 20 billion billion total /64 blocks. ISPs will run of capacity in their routing tables long before address blocks are exhausted. > Having an unnecessarily large amount of addresses is a good thing Agreed. Both 64-bit and 128-bit have unnecessarily large address spaces. But 32-bit is too few, though, and byte/word alignment is convenient. So 64-bit is convenient, unnecessarily large solution.
    - Dagger2 8y ago
      There's no requirement for ISPs to allocate /64 blocks. The requirement is that they allocate enough address space for all of their client's networks to use /64s. As such, all recommendations are for /56 at least (which takes up the exact same amount of space in their routing tables as /64 does: one entry). If v6 was 64 bits in total, then ISPs would need to be allocating something closer to /48s to users at a minimum... but can you really imagine ISPs giving /48s in a 64-bit space when many of those same ISPs don't even give something larger than /64 in a 128-bit space? And this is despite the fact that a /48-in-64-bits would be 256 networks of 256 IPs each, which is far smaller than a /56's 256 networks of 2^64 IPs each? We know from v4 that 256 IPs in a network is frequently too small. I'm just not convinced that 64 bits is enough, and I don't think we should expend this much effort deploying something that could be too small. Sure, it might be big enough with careful management, but I think it would be stupid to take the risk. If you were arguing for an 80 bit address space then I'd have a much harder time calling it a risk, but for some reason 80 bits is an incredibly unpopular length.
zlynx 8y ago
I doubt anyone cares about efficiency or I wouldn't find people storing IP addresses in JSON, as text. Unnormalized too, so IPv6 is almost guaranteed to be broken.
- zamadatix 8y ago
  That's like saying towing capacity isn't important in semi's because you see boxes from Amazon that only weigh 25 lbs. Sure some random app might only deal with 25 lbs worth of efficiency problems but it's not the only piece of software that has to process IPs, such as a load balancer, home router (on underpowered CPUs), and ever increasing amounts of software networking.