[ppml] IPv6, Vista, and the Popular Press

[Paul Vixie]

> Why have I heard so much about routers not being able to handle IPv6?

bunch of whiners, prolly.

> Is it really not as big a problem as I've heard (I honestly don't know), or
> was the "can be built with '90s hardware" believe a bit optimistic?

it really isn't a problem.  really.

> Oh, and the urban legend about 64 versus 128 bits I heard from someone who
> was on the IPv6 working group, though I don't recall who it was now.

everybody who was anybody was on the ipv6 working group.  great big parties,
standing room only in the meeting rooms, spilled out into the hallways.

> I'll take your word on it, but it's still the case that a lot of people
> don't fully understand just how large 64 and 128 bit numbers are.  :-)

while they're representable as numbers, and drc (whose words are not to be
dismissed likely) said here yesterday that they are numbers, to me they are
more usefully thought of as bit vectors.  when compared to other bit vectors
like GPU or VLIW ALU's, 128 bits isn't so much.  i was perplexed by the very
desperate need to immediately waste half of them on EUI64, as it folks didn't
feel safe when surrounded by all that address space and needed to burn some
of it off to get down to a size they could comprehend, but, 128 bits isn't
really all that large when you consider the 4-bit and 16-bit boundaries
imposed by the PTR naming conventions.