4 ms·
Something seems a bit off about this article. "Because Ethernet came first" is the real answer; and it being a local network technology, was not readily scaled
by userbinator 1y ago
Something seems a bit off about this article. "Because Ethernet came first" is the real answer; and it being a local network technology, was not readily scaled beyond that, despite the MAC address space being 64k times larger than the IPv4 address space. A key point worth noting about the IP address space, which enabled this crucial scaling to global networks, is its hierarchical structure. MAC addresses are assigned to hardware interfaces, independent of their location, while IP addresses are assigned hierarchically much like numbers in the telephone system, allowing for relatively easy routing at a global scale.
A typical packet found on a typical network has a structure like this
IPv6? That's... not really "typical", yet. IMHO even packets with 802.1q tags are going to be more commonly found and "typical" than IPv6.
- kstrauser 1y agoGoogle says nearly half their global traffic is IPv6 today, as is a vast chunk of mobile traffic. It’s pretty typical lately.
- dpark 1y agoIs that including their internal traffic? I would expect that the traffic they control runs way more ipv6 than what comes in from customers.
- kstrauser 1y agoLooks like that’s just for customers: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
- dpark 1y agoVery interesting. Thanks. Good to see adoption is happening, even if it’s slow.
- immibis 1y agoIt's mostly because mobile networks can't get the size of address blocks they'd need to give every customer an IP address. They all run CGNAT, but that's a pain too. Both Google and Apple require your apps to work on IPv6-only networks IIRC, or they won't be approved for the app stores. Fun fact: Your website loads faster on cellphones if it supports IPv6, because the CGNAT gateway detour adds measurable latency.
- Neywiny 1y agoI see the Ethernet coming first answer in another comment too. Just to be clear, many protocols came before IPv4 that aren't in play. It's not because it came first, it's because they're layered. Why need an IP if you have a port number? Why need a port number if you have a url?. As also mentioned in a comment, there's IPv4 over not just Ethernet. So I agree with your comment, but a bit of pedantry goes a long way
- immibis 1y agoEthernet did not come first. IP was running over non-Ethernet links long before there was Ethernet. Ethernet can't scale like IP because it's a non-hierarchical address structure.