Comment by voidmain

I can't help but think that numbering all the devices was the wrong idea from the beginning. You don't want to talk to devices, you want to talk to (and offer) services. You probably need something like an AS number to make global routing efficient, but 32 bits would be plenty for that. A packet could be (destination AS, stream ID, encrypted( payload )) and DNS would give you a capability (destination AS, stream ID, keys) for a service. You send a packet to that stream asking to open a connection and providing a capability to reply (with a capability for the specific stream). Your network up to the AS level should have an opportunity to augment the stream IDs in whatever way is convenient for its routing. No one reveals any topology information, network neutrality and a degree of privacy is guaranteed at the protocol level, only really serious multipeer networks need to assign addresses above layer 2, and I think it would be reasonably easy to come up with an edges first incentive compatible transition plan (which is where ipv6 went wrong).

(This is of course an incomplete and poorly thought out proposal, you don't need to dogpile me about that.)