Comment by throw0101c
1 day ago
Ran across a comment a while ago on some fun "IPv6 math":
On the surface of the Earth [land+water], there are 8.4 IPv4 addresses per km². Not counting the oceans, that would be 28 IPv4 addresses per km² land.
IPv6 gives 10¹⁷ addresses per mm² (yes, square millimetre).
In terms of volume, 10⁸ IPv6 addresses per mm³ throughout the Earth.
That is a fun exercise! However the reality is that public IPv6 is always given out in 48 or 64 bits prefixes (minimum).
The math is a lot less impressive when you do it with 2^48 or 2^64.
Yep. IPv6 should be thought of as 2^64 subnets, each with "enough space for everyone" within each subnet.
But it is really about more than just the available pool of addresses.
Much of the IPv6 rollout challenges have been centered around routing and security. It's great that I can personally have (in theory) more IP addresses than I would ever practically need (and I am saying this as someone with 200 IP endpoints just in my house), but if I can't easily manage and control access much of the theoretical benefit goes away.
IMO, IPv6 solved the address pool size part of the issue, but it made managing the v4 to v6 transition very painful.
> IMO, IPv6 solved the address pool size part of the issue, but it made managing the v4 to v6 transition very painful.
There is no easy way to transition from IPv4 to any kind of IPng; see my other comment:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50288091
You can still control access. Most home routers have firewalls that work a lot like V4 port forwarding except they don't have to maintain NAT tables or use as much CPU .
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