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There were proposals for backwards compatible addressing schemes. But they were rejected for a "clean slate" approach. Almost 30 years later, we can see how suc

There were proposals for backwards compatible addressing schemes. But they were rejected for a "clean slate" approach. Almost 30 years later, we can see how successful that was... EIP (Extended Internet Protocol) [0] was proposed in 1992 as a replacement for IPv4: "EIP achieves maximum backward compatibility with IP by making the extended space appear to be an IP option to the IP hosts and routers. When an IP host receives an EIP packets, the EIP Extension field is safely ignored as it appears to the IP hosts as an new, therefore an unknown, IP option. As a result, there is no need for translation for in-coming EIP packets destined to IP hosts and there is also no need for subnet routers to be upgraded during the transition period." [0] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1385.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1385.html

hkt 6y ago
I didn't know this was a thing, but it is always a pleasure to know people thought of something like this when I was a toddler.
welterde 6y ago
IPv6 can do that too though! 6in4 is exactly equivalent to the proposed EIP extension. EIP still splits the internet into the old legacy v4 internet and the new EIP internet that cannot communicate with the old internet, since while you can send packets to a v4-only host it won't know what to do with it. You need to preserve this extra information - and IPv4 simply cannot do that. You cannot fit more than 32 bit of information into 32 bit..
Dagger2 6y ago
This proposal essentially ended up as part of v6 in the form of 6to4. 6to4 uses an L4 protocol rather than an IP option, but that's more or less equivalent (and since there are a fair few routers on the internet that drop packets with unknown IP options it ends up working better). But v6 doing something has never stopped people from complaining that v6 sucks for not doing the thing in question...

hkt 6y ago

I didn't know this was a thing, but it is always a pleasure to know people thought of something like this when I was a toddler.

welterde 6y ago

IPv6 can do that too though! 6in4 is exactly equivalent to the proposed EIP extension. EIP still splits the internet into the old legacy v4 internet and the new EIP internet that cannot communicate with the old internet, since while you can send packets to a v4-only host it won't know what to do with it. You need to preserve this extra information - and IPv4 simply cannot do that. You cannot fit more than 32 bit of information into 32 bit..

Dagger2 6y ago

This proposal essentially ended up as part of v6 in the form of 6to4. 6to4 uses an L4 protocol rather than an IP option, but that's more or less equivalent (and since there are a fair few routers on the internet that drop packets with unknown IP options it ends up working better). But v6 doing something has never stopped people from complaining that v6 sucks for not doing the thing in question...