4 ms·

I'm sure people said exactly this about IPv4 back in the days.

dns_snek 3y ago
Can you even begin to imagine a use case that could come close to exhausting an IP space that is perfectly capable of assigning a /60 subnet to every single grain of sand on earth? That subnet is large enough to then assign an IP address to every individual atom in that grain of sand. For comparison, if we wanted to assign every living person on Earth a grain of sand, we would only need a few cubic feet of it (less than 1 cubic meter).
- corobo 3y ago
  Nanites might give you a good start Of course we'd all be paperclips long before they need to worry about networking
- diggan 3y ago
  > Can you even begin to imagine a use case that could come close to exhausting an IP space that is perfectly capable of assigning a /60 subnet to every single grain of sand on earth? As parent said, I'm sure people made the exact same argument about IPv4 back in the day, but comparing it to something else. And when IPv16 finally appears in the future, people will yet again make exactly the same argument.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    > As parent said, I'm sure people made the exact same argument about IPv4 back in the day, but comparing it to something else. You're ignoring the sheer scale of this question. We don't have enough raw materials on this planet, or likely in the observable universe, to produce enough devices that would consume that many IPs. We could colonize 1 billion planets. Each of those planets could have 100 billion people. Each of those 100 billion people could own 1 billion "things" that could be considered "networked devices". Each of those "things" could consume 1 billion IPs. We could have all that, and we would still have 70% of the IPv6 space left. > The decision to put a 32-bit address space on there was the result of a year’s battle among a bunch of engineers who couldn’t make up their minds about 32, 128 or variable length. And after a year of fighting I said — I’m now at ARPA, I’m running the program, I’m paying for this stuff and using American tax dollars — and I wanted some progress because we didn’t know if this is going to work. So I said 32 bits, it is enough for an experiment, it is 4.3 billion terminations — even the defense department doesn’t need 4.3 billion of anything and it couldn’t afford to buy 4.3 billion edge devices to do a test anyway. So at the time I thought we were doing a experiment to prove the technology and that if it worked we’d have an opportunity to do a production version of it. Well — [laughter] — it just escaped! — it got out and people started to use it and then it became a commercial thing. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZo69JQoLb8&t=816s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZo69JQoLb8&t=816s They were contemplating 128 bits addresses all the way back then, but settled on 32 bits as a mere proof of concept that got out of hand.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  One use case is private entities squatting on massive ranges that they have no hope of ever practically using, and thereby extorting other people and organizations as the rest of the address space gets massively over-allocated to other uses.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Allowing a credit card company to have a /16 is one way to do it. Do that 65,535 more times and IPv6 is exhausted.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    Fair point, but that's politics and bad actors, no standard can survive that.
soneil 3y ago
So the funny thing is .. they didn't. They really didn't. The original numbering plan for IP was that each network number became a /8. Which is how we miraculously ended up with 10/8, because network 10 was ARPANET itself, so 'flag day' left 10/8 vacant. But back to the point at hand. IP itself is RFC 791, September 1981, nice and famous. The addition of classful networking because 255 network numbers wasn't going to last long, was RFC 790. The first workaround for IP exhaustion was published before IP. It's been a Known Issue since day negative-one.

Can you even begin to imagine a use case that could come close to exhausting an IP space that is perfectly capable of assigning a /60 subnet to every single grain of sand on earth? That subnet is large enough to then assign an IP address to every individual atom in that grain of sand. For comparison, if we wanted to assign every living person on Earth a grain of sand, we would only need a few cubic feet of it (less than 1 cubic meter).

corobo 3y ago
Nanites might give you a good start Of course we'd all be paperclips long before they need to worry about networking
diggan 3y ago
> Can you even begin to imagine a use case that could come close to exhausting an IP space that is perfectly capable of assigning a /60 subnet to every single grain of sand on earth? As parent said, I'm sure people made the exact same argument about IPv4 back in the day, but comparing it to something else. And when IPv16 finally appears in the future, people will yet again make exactly the same argument.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  > As parent said, I'm sure people made the exact same argument about IPv4 back in the day, but comparing it to something else. You're ignoring the sheer scale of this question. We don't have enough raw materials on this planet, or likely in the observable universe, to produce enough devices that would consume that many IPs. We could colonize 1 billion planets. Each of those planets could have 100 billion people. Each of those 100 billion people could own 1 billion "things" that could be considered "networked devices". Each of those "things" could consume 1 billion IPs. We could have all that, and we would still have 70% of the IPv6 space left. > The decision to put a 32-bit address space on there was the result of a year’s battle among a bunch of engineers who couldn’t make up their minds about 32, 128 or variable length. And after a year of fighting I said — I’m now at ARPA, I’m running the program, I’m paying for this stuff and using American tax dollars — and I wanted some progress because we didn’t know if this is going to work. So I said 32 bits, it is enough for an experiment, it is 4.3 billion terminations — even the defense department doesn’t need 4.3 billion of anything and it couldn’t afford to buy 4.3 billion edge devices to do a test anyway. So at the time I thought we were doing a experiment to prove the technology and that if it worked we’d have an opportunity to do a production version of it. Well — [laughter] — it just escaped! — it got out and people started to use it and then it became a commercial thing. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZo69JQoLb8&t=816s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZo69JQoLb8&t=816s They were contemplating 128 bits addresses all the way back then, but settled on 32 bits as a mere proof of concept that got out of hand.
nerdponx 3y ago
One use case is private entities squatting on massive ranges that they have no hope of ever practically using, and thereby extorting other people and organizations as the rest of the address space gets massively over-allocated to other uses.
bombcar 3y ago
Allowing a credit card company to have a /16 is one way to do it. Do that 65,535 more times and IPv6 is exhausted.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  Fair point, but that's politics and bad actors, no standard can survive that.

soneil 3y ago

So the funny thing is .. they didn't. They really didn't. The original numbering plan for IP was that each network number became a /8. Which is how we miraculously ended up with 10/8, because network 10 was ARPANET itself, so 'flag day' left 10/8 vacant. But back to the point at hand. IP itself is RFC 791, September 1981, nice and famous. The addition of classful networking because 255 network numbers wasn't going to last long, was RFC 790. The first workaround for IP exhaustion was published before IP. It's been a Known Issue since day negative-one.