[arin-ppml] An article of interest to the community....

[Owen DeLong]

On Sep 2, 2011, at 12:28 AM, Matthew Kaufman wrote:

> On 9/2/11 6:31 AM, Michael Wallace wrote:
>> 
>> I'm new over here.  Been reading for a couple of weeks.
> 
> Welcome.
> 
>> 
>> The only issue I see with IP addresses is people not even making an attempt to use IPv6.  We have so many IP addresses in IPv6 that we should never run out. 
> 
> That's a myth.
> 
Actually, no, it isn't.

> The myth is that there's more IPv6 addresses than there are grains of sand on every beach in the world. And while that's true, you'll find that even if you put 100 hosts on every IPv6 subnet (which is entirely unlikely) and use all of the space that isn't otherwise reserved, you only have as many hosts supported as there are grains of sand on a single small beach. Which isn't nearly enough to "never run out".
> 

The myth is... and while that's true...

Pick one... Either it's true, or, it's a myth.

I find it very interesting that you think there are 1,800 quintillion+  beaches. I do not believe that is possibly true.

There are 18 quintillion+ subnets available at /64, so, 100 hosts on each would be 1,800 quintillion+, so, your single beach claim is actually a myth.

From a quick scan of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_beaches it appears that there are less than 1,000 beaches listed. Assuming they have
missed 9 out of 10 beaches (which I think unlikely), you're still at less than 10,000 beaches.

If we put 100 /64 subnets on each beach, we'd use 1,000,000 subnets or roughly a /44 of address IPv6 address space.

All the beaches on earth (and then some) with 100 IP addresses per grain of sand (I'm taking your and other people's
words for the idea that there are approximately 18,000,000,000,000,000,000 grains of sand per beach) would actually
only require a /44.

There are 17,592,000,000,000+  more /44s available in IPv6 even after this silly exercise.

I doubt we will "never" run out. 'Tis true. However, I do suspect that we will not run out within the expected lifetime of the protocol and that address size will not be the scaling limit that causes the eventual demise of IPv6.

>> 
>>   I tried to make a pretty big push to use IPv6 but failed doing so.  Only because I'm getting push back from my upstream providers (Ill leave them unnamed). 
> 
> Don't leave them unnamed. The best way to "push to use IPv6" is to name who isn't making it possible.
> 

This, I completely agree with.

Owen

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