Re: IPv6 end user addressing

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

On Aug 7, 2011, at 3:09 PM, Jonathon Exley wrote:

> This has probably been said before, but it makes me uncomfortable to think of everybody in the world being given /48 
> subnets by default.
> All of a sudden that wide expanse of 2^128 IP addresses shrinks to 2^48 sites. Sure that's still 65535 times more 
> than 2^32 IPv4 addresses, but wouldn't it be wise to apply some conservatism now to allow the IPv6 address space to 
> last for many more years? 
> After all, there are only 4 bits of IP version field so the basic packet format won't last forever.

Let's look at this realistically.

In 30+ years of internet development, giving IP addresses to lots of things besides just single sites, we still haven't
completely used up the 32 bit space. This includes reserving 1/16th of it for unknown purposes that are never to be.

65,536 times enough space for all the sites we deployed in 30+ years will more than likely outlast the lifetime of the
protocol, so, yeah, I'm OK with giving every end-site in the world (note an end-site is not a  person, it's a building,
structure, or tenant in a multi-tenant building or structure).

Owen

P.S. Jonathon: If anything in your email was confidential, too bad. You posted it to a public list. Silly notice at the
bottom to that effect removed.

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