2 ms·
> 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.
by 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