4 ms·

>because ISPs want to upsell I wish it were even an option to buy a static IPv6 block from my ISP, but they don't even offer it at all. This is with Bell Cana

>because ISPs want to upsell I wish it were even an option to buy a static IPv6 block from my ISP, but they don't even offer it at all. This is with Bell Canada with 1.5Gbps down/1Gbps up fibre-to-the-home. You'd think if they can support cutting edge last mile connectivity they'd support a 90s IP standard... Instead we're stuck with ephemeral IPv4 addresses that geo-resolve to cities hundreds of kilometres away. I guess they ran out of addresses that are registered to my actual city. Just last week an online purchase I made was flagged for fraud because my IP didn't resolve close enough to my listed address. The support team then asked me to try tethering to my mobile phone, which of course was assigned an IPv4 address that resolved to a different city hundreds of kilometres in the opposite direction. Why-o-why wasn't IPv4 64 bits long to begin with?

takeda 6y ago
4.3billion computers seemed like it was enough when the world population was 3.6 billion. But then they started assigning /8 (16.8 million addresses) to companies like Ford Motors. Another 16.8 million addresses to represent loopback. IPv6 is assigned similarly like that, for example /64 (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses) is the smallest allocation unit for SLAAC. I'm wondering when we will need IPv7.
- LinuxBender 6y ago
  Don't forget ipv10 [1] [1] - https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-omar-ipv10-06.html https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-omar-ipv10-06.html
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
IP was developed before the PC revolution. At that time computers/servers were immobile installations in large institutions like schools, companies, and other similar facilities. No one could imagine that this technology basically would shrink and be available to everyone in their pocket connected by widespread and comparatively cheaper cellular technology.
- syncsynchalt 6y ago
  Not to mention that nobody really thought their second attempt at a packet-switched network would be the one every person on earth was going to use. ARPANET / NCP was only a few years before. If IP wasn't big enough, we'd just make another one in a few years!
throw0101a 6y ago
> Instead we're stuck with ephemeral IPv4 addresses that geo-resolve to cities hundreds of kilometres away. Yay! This reduces the amount of information mega-corps can glean from me with minimal effort. Given that I'm in Canada, I often get French-language ads served to me because somebody thinks I'm in Quebec (I'm not). > Why-o-why wasn't IPv4 64 bits long to begin with? Because it was a research project whose designers didn't expect it to escape the academia and take over the world; Vint Cerf: > As we were thinking about the Internet (thinking well, this is going to be some arbitrary number of networks all interconnected — we don't know how many and we don't know how they'll be connected), but national scale networks we thought "well, maybe there'll be two per country" (because it was expensive: at this point Ethernet had been invented but it wasn't proliferating everywhere, as it did do a few years later). > Then we said "how many countries are there?" (two networks per country, how many networks?) and we didn't have Google to ask, so we guessed at 128 and that would be 2 times 128 is 256 networks (that's 8 bits) and then we said "how many computers will there be on each network?" and we said "how about 16 million?" (that's another 24 bits) so we had a 32-bit address which allowed 4.3 billion terminations — which I thought in 1974/3 was enough to do the experiment! * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17GtmwyvmWE&t=26m18s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17GtmwyvmWE&t=26m18s IPv4 with its 32-bit addresses was the "test" system which, if it worked, would then be turned into a production system later. "Later" turned out to be 2012 when World IPv6 Day was announced. So per Vint Cerf, if you want to run the "production Internet", use IPv6.
- dublin 6y ago
  And yet, despite far-from optimal allocation, no one is worried about running out of 48-bit MAC addresses, which need to be globally unique. That's because 64K the size of the Internet is more than adequate.
  - throw0101a 6y ago
    The original (experimental) Ethernet paper published in 1976 only had 8-bit addresses. They then went into 'production' with the DIX Ethernet II standard in 1980 with the now well-known 48-bit MAC, however the standard states that at the Physical Layer the maximum number of stations was 1024 (§1): * https://ethernethistory.typepad.com/papers/EthernetSpec.pdf https://ethernethistory.typepad.com/papers/EthernetSpec.pdf So while yes, the address space was bigger, the scope over which Ethernet had to work was much smaller and less ambitious (IMHO). No routing involved for example.

takeda 6y ago

4.3billion computers seemed like it was enough when the world population was 3.6 billion. But then they started assigning /8 (16.8 million addresses) to companies like Ford Motors. Another 16.8 million addresses to represent loopback. IPv6 is assigned similarly like that, for example /64 (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses) is the smallest allocation unit for SLAAC. I'm wondering when we will need IPv7.

LinuxBender 6y ago
Don't forget ipv10 [1] [1] - https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-omar-ipv10-06.html https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-omar-ipv10-06.html

tenebrisalietum 6y ago

IP was developed before the PC revolution. At that time computers/servers were immobile installations in large institutions like schools, companies, and other similar facilities. No one could imagine that this technology basically would shrink and be available to everyone in their pocket connected by widespread and comparatively cheaper cellular technology.

syncsynchalt 6y ago
Not to mention that nobody really thought their second attempt at a packet-switched network would be the one every person on earth was going to use. ARPANET / NCP was only a few years before. If IP wasn't big enough, we'd just make another one in a few years!

throw0101a 6y ago

> Instead we're stuck with ephemeral IPv4 addresses that geo-resolve to cities hundreds of kilometres away. Yay! This reduces the amount of information mega-corps can glean from me with minimal effort. Given that I'm in Canada, I often get French-language ads served to me because somebody thinks I'm in Quebec (I'm not). > Why-o-why wasn't IPv4 64 bits long to begin with? Because it was a research project whose designers didn't expect it to escape the academia and take over the world; Vint Cerf: > As we were thinking about the Internet (thinking well, this is going to be some arbitrary number of networks all interconnected — we don't know how many and we don't know how they'll be connected), but national scale networks we thought "well, maybe there'll be two per country" (because it was expensive: at this point Ethernet had been invented but it wasn't proliferating everywhere, as it did do a few years later). > Then we said "how many countries are there?" (two networks per country, how many networks?) and we didn't have Google to ask, so we guessed at 128 and that would be 2 times 128 is 256 networks (that's 8 bits) and then we said "how many computers will there be on each network?" and we said "how about 16 million?" (that's another 24 bits) so we had a 32-bit address which allowed 4.3 billion terminations — which I thought in 1974/3 was enough to do the experiment! * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17GtmwyvmWE&t=26m18s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17GtmwyvmWE&t=26m18s IPv4 with its 32-bit addresses was the "test" system which, if it worked, would then be turned into a production system later. "Later" turned out to be 2012 when World IPv6 Day was announced. So per Vint Cerf, if you want to run the "production Internet", use IPv6.

dublin 6y ago
And yet, despite far-from optimal allocation, no one is worried about running out of 48-bit MAC addresses, which need to be globally unique. That's because 64K the size of the Internet is more than adequate.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  The original (experimental) Ethernet paper published in 1976 only had 8-bit addresses. They then went into 'production' with the DIX Ethernet II standard in 1980 with the now well-known 48-bit MAC, however the standard states that at the Physical Layer the maximum number of stations was 1024 (§1): * https://ethernethistory.typepad.com/papers/EthernetSpec.pdf https://ethernethistory.typepad.com/papers/EthernetSpec.pdf So while yes, the address space was bigger, the scope over which Ethernet had to work was much smaller and less ambitious (IMHO). No routing involved for example.