Babwa Wawa: IPv6 is a bandaid at best. IPv4 has a 32-bit address, and IPv6 has 64-bit address. Doubling the IP addresses might seem like a lot, but think about how fast additional devices are being added to the internet. We'll run out of addresses in another 5 years.We should go ahead and implement IPv7 now and skip this version.

IPv6 is 128 bit and allows 10 to the 38th addresses.

Babwa Wawa: IPv6 is a bandaid at best. IPv4 has a 32-bit address, and IPv6 has 128-bit address.Multiplying the IP addresses by a factor of a hell of a lot of additional zeroes might seem like a lot as SnarfVader will point out, but think about how fast additional devices are being added to the internet. We'll run out of addresses in another x number of years.We should go ahead and implement IPv7 now and skip this version.

Fixed that for you.

"The new, larger IPv6 expands the limit to 2^128 addresses-more than 340 trillion, trillion, trillion! Enough for essentially unlimited growth for the foreseeable future."

I hope I'm alive when kids read that and laugh like we do at "I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them".

Slaxl: I hope I'm alive when kids read that and laugh like we do at "I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them".

While I agree with you in principle, IPv6 means a million times a billion times a trillion IP addresses for every person on Earth right now. I just don't see us running out in my lifetime.

Babwa Wawa: IPv6 is a bandaid at best. IPv4 has a 32-bit address, and IPv6 has 64-bit address. Doubling the IP addresses might seem like a lot, but think about how fast additional devices are being added to the internet. We'll run out of addresses in another 5 years.We should go ahead and implement IPv7 now and skip this version.

I love Abbot and Costello math!

Babwa Wawa: IPv6 is a bandaid at best. IPv4 has a 32-bit address, and IPv6 has 64-bit address. Doubling the IP addresses might seem like a lot, but think about how fast additional devices are being added to the internet. We'll run out of addresses in another 5 years.We should go ahead and implement IPv7 now and skip this version.

IP versions are like Star Trek movies, the odd ones suck. We'd have to jump to IPv8 or IPv10.

/yes there was an IPv5, but no one really liked it.

Babwa Wawa: SnarfVader: ...

Crapweasel: ...

Last I checked, 64 is equal to 32 time 2. Let me check my calculator.

Yup.

On the off-chance you're being serious, "bits" refers to the largest possible number of digits in an individual number the system can handle. The difference in the _absolute_ number of distinct entries in a 64-bit vs 32-bit system is a doubling per bit increase in number size.

So the difference is 2^32 = about 4 billion times as many addresses for a 64 bit system over a 32-bit one. Well, in theory, some of it is lost to practical concerns and bookkeeping, but not much. Also, as noted, IPv6 is 128 bit, not 64 bit.

Slaxl: "The new, larger IPv6 expands the limit to 2^128 addresses-more than 340 trillion, trillion, trillion! Enough for essentially unlimited growth for the foreseeable future."

I hope I'm alive when kids read that and laugh like we do at "I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them".

If you divide the total estimated mass of earth by 2^128, you obtain about 17 picograms. You could give each particle of dust on earth its own ipv6 address without running out.

I think 2^128 addresses should be enough for anyone.

In a world where you read this headline in my voice...

/R.I.P. Don "The Voice" LaFontaine

ChrisDe: Babwa Wawa: SnarfVader: ...

Crapweasel: ...

Last I checked, 64 is equal to 32 time 2. Let me check my calculator.

Yup.

notsureifserious.jpg

Me neither.

Perhaps if we listed them all.

Or just look at it like this.

If IP addresses were only 1 bit, there would only be 2 of them.
2 bits, there would be 4
3 bits there would be 8.
4 bits there would be 16

So you double the number of IP addys every time you add a bit.

And as someone else pointed out it uses 128 bits, not 64.

So if you keep up with the example above and continue doing it for 128 iterations you end up with a farking big ass number

2^128 in fact.

which is......340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456

And if my math don't fail me now that's 4.86117667 × 10^27 IP addresses for each man, woman and child on the earth today (approximately).

Now the internet tells me (and I don't know if it's right, but it's a .edu site so I'm going with it) that the average human body only has 100 trillion or 10^14 cells

So look at it this way. We could assign an IP address to every cell in every human on the planet and still have some a shiatload left over for our pets and TVs and toasters and iPhones even.

I hate IPv6. IPv4 is so much easier.

IPv4: What's your ip address? 192.168.0.210

IPv6: What's your ip address? fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e:8329

Thanks engineering asshats. Way to make that shiat even remotely human readable. Not to mention able to be memorized.

I can see it now.... "M as an Mancy...."

/Technical support monkey

Happy Hours: ChrisDe: Babwa Wawa: SnarfVader: ...

Crapweasel: ...

----

So if you keep up with the example above and continue doing it for 128 iterations you end up with a farking big ass number

2^128 in fact.

which is......340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456

And if my math don't fail me now that's 4.86117667 × 10^27 IP addresses for each man, woman and child on the earth today (approximately).

Now the internet tells me (and I don't know if it's right, but it's a .edu site so I'm going with it) that the average human body only has 100 trillion or 10^14 cells

So look at it this way. We could assign an IP address to every cell in every human on the planet and still have some a shiatload left over for our pets and TVs and toasters and iPhones even.

syberpud: IP versions are like Star Trek movies, the odd ones suck. We'd have to jump to IPv8 or IPv10.

/yes there was an IPv5, but no one really liked it.

There were also IPv7, IPv8 and IPv9. Those, along with IPv6, were part of the IP=next-generation test protocols, and IPv6 won the deployment testing. As you mention, there was an IPv5, it was a connection oriented protocol, much more like most networks were back in the 1970s, rather than the radically different packet-oriented protocol that IPv4 was.

SnarfVader: Babwa Wawa: IPv6 is a bandaid at best. IPv4 has a 32-bit address, and IPv6 has 64-bit address. Doubling the IP addresses might seem like a lot, but think about how fast additional devices are being added to the internet. We'll run out of addresses in another 5 years.We should go ahead and implement IPv7 now and skip this version.

IPv6 is 128 bit and allows 10 to the 38th addresses.

There are about 10**49 atoms on Earth. This means that we should have enough IP addresses to give one to every 10**11 atoms (I believe that works out to about .06 angstrom) on Earth.

We may need more than that many addresses eventually, not because we run out, but rather because we decide to organize the addresses in a hierarchy that requires a different allocation method which happens to leave large sections of IP addresses unallocated. It's not inconceivable that we'll declare that any IP addresses for phones have to come from a particular address range (say a /4) while any home automation devices come from a different one.

Doorknobs would be a special case.

So...how does this affect my porn viewing?

Dangl1ng: Thanks engineering asshats. Way to make that shiat even remotely human readable. Not to mention able to be memorized.

Have you heard of that fancy new technology called "DNS" that allows to assign human-readable names to machines?
/don't use numeric IPs like a cave man

Dangl1ng: I hate IPv6. IPv4 is so much easier.

IPv4: What's your ip address? 192.168.0.210

IPv6: What's your ip address? fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e:8329

Thanks engineering asshats. Way to make that shiat even remotely human readable. Not to mention able to be memorized.

I can see it now.... "M as an Mancy...."

/Technical support monkey

Try settting up the rules on a router/firewall. It is really easy to misread/skip one of the paragraph of numbers/letters and really screw the network up.

andrewagill: SnarfVader: Babwa Wawa: IPv6 is a bandaid at best. IPv4 has a 32-bit address, and IPv6 has 64-bit address. Doubling the IP addresses might seem like a lot, but think about how fast additional devices are being added to the internet. We'll run out of addresses in another 5 years.We should go ahead and implement IPv7 now and skip this version.

IPv6 is 128 bit and allows 10 to the 38th addresses.

There are about 10**49 atoms on Earth. This means that we should have enough IP addresses to give one to every 10**11 atoms (I believe that works out to about .06 angstrom) on Earth.

We may need more than that many addresses eventually, not because we run out, but rather because we decide to organize the addresses in a hierarchy that requires a different allocation method which happens to leave large sections of IP addresses unallocated. It's not inconceivable that we'll declare that any IP addresses for phones have to come from a particular address range (say a /4) while any home automation devices come from a different one.

Doorknobs would be a special case.

Wow, completely ignore everything I said.

Angstrom is one of those funny little units that I love to use precisely because it's non-standard, and is totally not weight.

Also, the factor lapel method seems to have failed me. MORB says 17 picograms, and that's probably right.

Still the takeaway is that if we need a successor to IPv6, it will be because we want to organize the IPs.

/Also, factor that lapel!
//No, I'm not changing it.

Jethro74: So...how does this affect my porn viewing?

You get a lot more sexy bits.

Dangl1ng: I hate IPv6. IPv4 is so much easier.

IPv4: What's your ip address? 192.168.0.210

IPv6: What's your ip address? fe80::202:b3ff:fe1e:8329

Thanks engineering asshats. Way to make that shiat even remotely human readable. Not to mention able to be memorized.

I can see it now.... "M as an Mancy...."

/Technical support monkey

I'm waiting for someone to standardize a 64-character encoding scheme for IPs. [A-Za-z0-9] is 64 characters, and you should be able to get 128 bits into 22 characters with 4 check bits. IPv4 is 15 characters already.

Babwa Wawa: IPv6 is a bandaid at best. IPv4 has a 32-bit address, and IPv6 has 64-bit address. Doubling the IP addresses might seem like a lot, but think about how fast additional devices are being added to the internet. We'll run out of addresses in another 5 years.We should go ahead and implement IPv7 now and skip this version.

"Doubling the addresses" !?!?!?!

insert (That's not how it works.jpg)

Slaxl: I hope I'm alive when kids read that and laugh like we do at "I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them".

2 to the power of 128 ends up being 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 unique IP addresses.

In a different perspective, this is 252 addresses for every observable star in the known universe.

we could assign an IPV6 address to EVERY ATOM ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths.

I think IPV6 will hold us for a while.

Jethro74: So...how does this affect my porn viewing?

It means the internet never runs out of places to stick new porn sites.

/"places to stick them" heheh...

andrewagill: Also, the factor lapel method seems to have failed me. MORB says 17 picograms, and that's probably right.

The method I used was just to type "mass of earth divided by 2^128" in wolfram alpha

/I'm lazy

Where did Babwa Wawa run off to? Is recess over already?

Regardless of what one things about IPv6, the answer basically boils down to "you'll get over it" -- there's basically no other option that won't fark up the internet even more (like multi-NATing, as proposed by some ISPs).

For most home users and relatively small networks without IT staff, IPv6 is essentially automatic. Larger networks have IT staff who should have been planning (if not implementing) this for a while.

MORB: Have you heard of that fancy new technology called "DNS" that allows to assign human-readable names to machines?
/don't use numeric IPs like a cave man

You did read the part where I said I was a support monkey... right? So you know, I'll be the guy that is troubleshooting problems that involved DNS and have to verify that DNS is working properly. Which includes pinging the frak-all unholy hell that is ipv6.

See the comment right after yours for an example of why it sucks.

pkellmey: Try settting up the rules on a router/firewall. It is really easy to misread/skip one of the paragraph of numbers/letters and really screw the network up.

Yeah, that's why copy and paste is your friend. But when that isn't an option, I feel your pain.


skankboy: Where did Babwa Wawa run off to? Is recess over already?

He was successfully able to compute the square root of potato.

Babwa Wawa: heypete: For most home users and relatively small networks without IT staff, IPv6 is essentially automatic.

There's a wide swath of folks in the mid-market and SMB who are wholly unprepared for IPv6. Which is kind of why hasn't been widely adopted.

The RFC for IPv6 was first published in 1998. Sure, nobody's going to implement something as soon as it's standardized, but let's say that people only really started hearing about it in 2008, 10 years after the RFC was published. It's been four years since then, and articles about IPv4 address exhaustion have been published in non-technical media like BBC News and others.

There's really no excuse for small- and medium-sized businesses not knowing about it and having at least some sort of plan to deploy IPv6, even if the plan is 'bring in the contracted IT guy to get things set up".

As IPv4 addresses are exhausted, IPv6 will be the only option in the relatively near future. Might as well get started on it now, when both types of addresses are available. No better time than the present.

In short: "you'll get over it".

This time it is for real

Well, unless you're on Verizon Fios.

Babwa Wawa: The other aspect IPv6 lacks is NAT. With NAT, switching ISPs is a cinch. Without NAT, you have to re-address every device on the network, which breaks quite a few things on normal networks. That's a significant level of effort that helps lock you into your ISP.

It seems to me that changing isp will just change the address prefix for everything on your network as seen from outside; and you can replace that prefix with fe80 to have the corresponding lan address of a machine for internal use so you don't have to change all those addresses when switching isp.

It's like instead of using nat each machine had an ipv4 internet address starting with something like 80.50.0.XX while still also having a 192.168.0.XX address that can be used from your LAN.

if you think about it NAT is really just a hack to partially hijack the port number as an extension of the address. All the other useful thing that NAT does, like firewalling, are just fortunate side effects but can still be done with ipv6.

Babwa Wawa: syberpud: yes there was an IPv5, but no one really liked it.

I can't really troll well - I start off well, but I have no stamina. I'm sure Mrs. Wawa would concur.

I don't know many people who "like" IPv6. It introduces a host of pains that remain unresolved for the home, SOHO, and SMB markets (pretty well outlined in this recent Register article). To summarize, networks with less than robust asset management will have a very difficult time deploying IPv6. The best example is that switching ISPs in an IPv6 world is a royal pain in the ass unless you have a full-fledged, expensive enterprise network.


I know - boy do I know. I also work with our security team. Their usual set of tools and techniques are basically useless in a IPv6 world.