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It mostly only broke the things it had to break. v4 isn't forwards compatible to longer address lengths, so the lack of compatibility isn't the fault of any asp
by Dagger2 5y ago
It mostly only broke the things it had to break. v4 isn't forwards compatible to longer address lengths, so the lack of compatibility isn't the fault of any aspect of v6's design.
- _0w8t 5y agov6 128-bit address was an attempt to simplify the routing. The was fear that with big routing tables that v4 stated to require 25 years ago the performance would collapse. In practice it never became an issue. Yet with smaller address space, like with just 48 bits, connecting from v6 to v4 address would be possible with much less complex nat.
- Dagger2 5y agoThat was part of it, but there was also a desire to be very sure we had enough address space to avoid needing to go through this again. SEND and privacy extensions also make use of the 128-bit address to add some security. It's already possible to connect from v6 to v4, and using 48-bit addresses wouldn't make doing so any easier. 48 bits would also be way too small; there'd be no point in going to this amount of effort to update IP only to then have to do it a second time straight afterwards.