You're assuming that just getting a massive opportunity for more de-aggregation won't cause de-aggregation out of shear laziness and convenience. It's much easi

You're assuming that just getting a massive opportunity for more de-aggregation won't cause de-aggregation out of shear laziness and convenience. It's much easier to de-aggregate than it is to aggregate. The maximum IPv4 de-aggregation possible is 2^24 - 2 ^ 21. The maximum IPv6 de-aggregation with what's currently being handed out (mostly between /32 and /48's) is way, way, way more. So IPv6 has more addresses, yes. Just so long as you don't actually use them. The problem of course is that the memory requirements for IPv4 assignments were going up linearly. If you bought gear with a good amount of memory, you could therefore expect it to last a few years. Clearly the network vendors that designed IPv6 saw this as a problem ... how can we make it explode ? Well IPv6 was the answer. Problem is that they went completely batshit insane overboard. "If" IPv6 deaggregates we'll need routers with about 2^(48-24) TIMES more memory. Storing a deaggregated IPv6 routing table (which has to be in memory) requires 524288 terabytes of memory. The rest of IPv6 isn't much better. It's some academics wish-list, with total disregard for real-world concerns. It is not possible to use 1/10th of the IPv6 features. Multicast ? Won't work (on any public or even just somewhat large network). Encryption ? Won't work (too many devices don't support it). Anycast ? Won't work. Site-local anycast ? Won't work. Larger address space ? Won't work (in half the world). NAT-avoidance ? Won't work (didn't get past security engineers). Autoconfiguration ? Actually kinda handy in some scenarios, but again, won't work on most networks, where you fall back to the IPv4 mechanism. Faster routing due to "smarter" headers ? Doesn't work according to my load stats. Better Qos ? Doesn't work in either of the major routing gear vendors. Mobility ? Let's not go there. Instead of implementing sane "live" re-addressing they went with ... Aargh. Let's not go there. Automatic network renumbering ... riiiight. Heh. I wonder if this was put in as a joke. There are known solutions to all these problems (well, except the multicast and anycast ones), but of course, the IPv6 designers knew better. Welcome to the "solution". On the other hand, solving the solution pays rather well.