Comment by bradley13
4 days ago
The point of backwards compatibility would be to allow IPv4 devices to work on an IPv6 network. Not to run a parallel stack.
127.0.0.1 needed to be a valid IPv6 address, along with all the others. Pick a particular prefix, say 0...* and any address with that would be extended to 128 bits. That would have been backwards compatible.
No, that would be forwards compatibility. v4 doesn't have forwards compatibility with any address protocol that uses addresses bigger than 32 bits, and it never will regardless of how that protocol is designed because the flaw is in v4's design.
There is no possible way to design an address protocol with bigger addresses than v4 that a) makes v4 forward compatible with it, and b) can actually work. Feel free to suggest one.
> .0.0.1 needed to be a valid IPv6 address, along with all the others. Pick a particular prefix, say 0...* and any address with that would be extended to 128 bits
That prefix is ::ffff:0:0/96. 127.0.0.1 is ::ffff:127.0.0.1 (::ffff:7f00:1). 30 years and you still haven't realized v6 has this?