[ppml] Big numbers

[David Conrad]

Apropos a comment I made during the Q&A during the IPv6 working group 
discussion...

According to the latest IPv6 architecture drafts:
- 35,184,372,088,832 /48s currently available for assignment
- a bit under 246,290,604,621,824 /48s available under the other format 
specifiers

Just for fun, according to the US Census bureau:
- Estimated world population as of 4/7/03, 15:29 GMT+5: 6,285,260,947
- Estimated world population in 2050: ~9,000,000,000

Taking the 35,184,372,088,832 /48s currently available for assignments, 
this means:
- 5600 /48s per person today
- 3909 /48s per person in 2050

And then there are the other format specifiers...

Note that those are /48s (each capable of addressing 64K /64s or, if 
you want ignore the auto-configuration goop that eats the lower 64, 
1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 /128s).

As such, I don't believe address conservation is or will be an issue.  
At least for the lifetime of IPv6.  Keeping the routing system 
constrained undoubtedly is, although I'm not convinced this is the RIRs 
job (after all, RIRs explicitly do not guarantee routability)...

(Hope I got my math right... :-))

Rgds,
-drc