[ppml] IPv6, Vista, and the Popular Press

[Paul Vixie]

> I have heard that a large part of the reason IPv6 is 128 bits of address
> space instead of 64 is that a significant number of people on the committee
> didn't fully understand that 64 bits is way way more than twice the number
> of addresses we have with IPv4.

that's an urban legend.  the people who chose 128 bits were way smart about
the math of it.  they chose 128 bits as a "stretch goal", as in, enough better
than 32 bits to be worth the cost of transition, and enough bits that we'd
never run out, but still small enough to build with 1990's hardware.  the
fact that the EUI64 people immediately wasted half the new bits is a separate
problem due to incompetence by separate people than the ones who picked "128".