4 ms·

I do wonder if things would have been fine if had just added another octet. We would still have had enough addresses to not need more for the forseeable future.

I do wonder if things would have been fine if had just added another octet. We would still have had enough addresses to not need more for the forseeable future. Some may disagree, but a trillion addresses are fine for human population which is going plateau soon. I am not a network engineer, but I believe it would have been far easier to make the two versions interoperable. The number of addresses possible with IPv6 are too much for its own good. The ranges are absurdly long and far apart. Add to the difficulty to communicate and understand an address filled with hex-codes. I think IPv6 solved more problems than that were actually needed.

matthews2 3y ago
> for human population which is going plateau soon It's not an address per person any more, but an address per IoT device or connected sensor, which might continue to grow even if population doesn't.
- shubhamjain 3y ago
  Even with IPv6 we are not abandoning NAT. There are good reasons to have a single point of access / control. Do we really see billions of devices connected independently to the internet?
  - rekoil 3y ago
    Yes. And we are abandoning NAT, we're just not abandoning firewalls.
    - skissane 3y ago
      NAT still exists for IPv6. There is NAT66 and there is NPTv6. While no doubt there is less need for it than with IPv4, there are valid use cases for both.
      - rekoil 3y ago
        Yeah I meant in general. Of course I know there are use cases for NAT that are valid regardless of IP version in use.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
rekoil 3y ago
> I am not a network engineer, but I believe it would have been far easier to make the two versions interoperable. And what do you base this belief on? Fact is you'd run into exactly the same problems as with IPv6. Sure, network-enabled software might be easier to rewrite to support 40-bit IPv4+, but any hardware-accelerated products (routers, switches, network cards, etc.) would still need replacement (just as with IPv6), and you'd still need everyone to be assigned unique IPv4+ addresses in order to communicate with each other (just as with IPv6).
- shubhamjain 3y ago
  Yeah, it's a stupid comment. I don't know what I was thinking. Wish I could delete it.
  - rekoil 3y ago
    Haha, happens to us all. You're owning up to it at least!

matthews2 3y ago

> for human population which is going plateau soon It's not an address per person any more, but an address per IoT device or connected sensor, which might continue to grow even if population doesn't.

shubhamjain 3y ago
Even with IPv6 we are not abandoning NAT. There are good reasons to have a single point of access / control. Do we really see billions of devices connected independently to the internet?
- rekoil 3y ago
  Yes. And we are abandoning NAT, we're just not abandoning firewalls.
  - skissane 3y ago
    NAT still exists for IPv6. There is NAT66 and there is NPTv6. While no doubt there is less need for it than with IPv4, there are valid use cases for both.
    - rekoil 3y ago
      Yeah I meant in general. Of course I know there are use cases for NAT that are valid regardless of IP version in use.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

rekoil 3y ago

> I am not a network engineer, but I believe it would have been far easier to make the two versions interoperable. And what do you base this belief on? Fact is you'd run into exactly the same problems as with IPv6. Sure, network-enabled software might be easier to rewrite to support 40-bit IPv4+, but any hardware-accelerated products (routers, switches, network cards, etc.) would still need replacement (just as with IPv6), and you'd still need everyone to be assigned unique IPv4+ addresses in order to communicate with each other (just as with IPv6).

shubhamjain 3y ago
Yeah, it's a stupid comment. I don't know what I was thinking. Wish I could delete it.
- rekoil 3y ago
  Haha, happens to us all. You're owning up to it at least!