4 ms·

Thanks for pointing this out. It's hard to communicate ipv4 and I dread even reading ipv6. I don't understand why they didn't just add two or four more fields

Thanks for pointing this out. It's hard to communicate ipv4 and I dread even reading ipv6. I don't understand why they didn't just add two or four more fields to ipv4 e.g. 0.91.127.0.0.1 is localhost where 0.91 can be omitted in the local context. PS: I don't understand how networking works. Feels very very complex and full of jargons.

fragmede 2y ago
if ipv4 is called that because there are 4 numbers in the IP address, what would you call your scheme with 6 of them?
wolfendin 2y ago
Because the fields are there for humans, in the packet itself it’s a 32bit integer, and you can’t just arbitrarily make the src/dest fields in the packet bigger— it stops being IPv4 then.
- jkrejcha 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure the person you're replying to is saying that IPv6, should be IPv4 but longer, which is not at all an uncommon opinion, even if it's a breaking change to the IP protocol. And I'd argue there would've been incredibly strong benefits and much wider adoption if they did this. Sure, you'd still need new networking gear and software support to handle it, but the change is relatively simple (and potentially more easily backwards compatible), especially compared to all of the baggage that came with IPv6. It's a fact of life that working with networking that we'll have to work with IP addresses at some level. It's easy to tell someone, "hey try typing in 'ping 8.8.8.8' and tell me what you get". The readability of IPv6 is, in my opinion, worse with repeated symbols and more characters to remember. The symbols that were chosen were also poorly thought out. Colons are used in networking a lot of times when you want to connect to a service on a particular port, so if you want to visit 2001:4860:4860::8888 in your browser, you have to enclose the address in square brackets.
  - Lammy 2y ago
    > The symbols that were chosen were also poorly thought out. The wackiest example I've seen of this is the `ipv6-literal.net` notation for Windows UNC paths: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100915-00/?p=12863 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100915-00/?p=12...
throw0101d 2y ago
> I don't understand why they didn't just add two or four more fields to ipv4 e.g. 0.91.127.0.0.1 is localhost where 0.91 can be omitted in the local context. Because they thought that 64-bits would not be enough, and did not want to have to go through yet another transition. The IPng proposal that was chosen, SIPP, was originally 'only' 64-bits: * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752#section-9 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752#section-9 See also §10.2: * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752#section-10.2 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752#section-10.2 Specifically (§11.1): * scale - an address size of 128 bits easily meets the need to address 10**9 networks even in the face of the inherent inefficiency of address allocation for efficient routing

fragmede 2y ago

if ipv4 is called that because there are 4 numbers in the IP address, what would you call your scheme with 6 of them?

wolfendin 2y ago

Because the fields are there for humans, in the packet itself it’s a 32bit integer, and you can’t just arbitrarily make the src/dest fields in the packet bigger— it stops being IPv4 then.

jkrejcha 2y ago
I'm pretty sure the person you're replying to is saying that IPv6, should be IPv4 but longer, which is not at all an uncommon opinion, even if it's a breaking change to the IP protocol. And I'd argue there would've been incredibly strong benefits and much wider adoption if they did this. Sure, you'd still need new networking gear and software support to handle it, but the change is relatively simple (and potentially more easily backwards compatible), especially compared to all of the baggage that came with IPv6. It's a fact of life that working with networking that we'll have to work with IP addresses at some level. It's easy to tell someone, "hey try typing in 'ping 8.8.8.8' and tell me what you get". The readability of IPv6 is, in my opinion, worse with repeated symbols and more characters to remember. The symbols that were chosen were also poorly thought out. Colons are used in networking a lot of times when you want to connect to a service on a particular port, so if you want to visit 2001:4860:4860::8888 in your browser, you have to enclose the address in square brackets.
- Lammy 2y ago
  > The symbols that were chosen were also poorly thought out. The wackiest example I've seen of this is the `ipv6-literal.net` notation for Windows UNC paths: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100915-00/?p=12863 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100915-00/?p=12...

throw0101d 2y ago

> I don't understand why they didn't just add two or four more fields to ipv4 e.g. 0.91.127.0.0.1 is localhost where 0.91 can be omitted in the local context. Because they thought that 64-bits would not be enough, and did not want to have to go through yet another transition. The IPng proposal that was chosen, SIPP, was originally 'only' 64-bits: * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752#section-9 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752#section-9 See also §10.2: * https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752#section-10.2 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1752#section-10.2 Specifically (§11.1): * scale - an address size of 128 bits easily meets the need to address 10**9 networks even in the face of the inherent inefficiency of address allocation for efficient routing