That might well be true! It just doesn't seem to be possible. There's no point wishing for fewer breaking changes when the one thing you're doing all of this fo

That might well be true! It just doesn't seem to be possible. There's no point wishing for fewer breaking changes when the one thing you're doing all of this for -- longer addresses -- is the thing causing the breakage. I don't think any of your IP-long suggestions would reduce the time you needed to deploy v6. If you disagree... perhaps v6 wouldn't actually take you as much time to deploy as you're imagining it will.