Using IPv6 with prefixes shorter than a /64 on a LAN

Roland Dobbins rdobbins at arbor.net
Wed Jan 26 04:53:23 UTC 2011


On Jan 26, 2011, at 11:37 AM, Adrian Chadd wrote:

> But simply assuming that the IPv6 address space will forever remain that - only unique host identifiers - I think is disingenious at best. :-)

I think 'disingenuous' is too strong a word - 'overly optimistic' better reflects the position, IMHO.

;>

In addition to all the extremely valid use-cases you outline, there's also the concept of one-time-use prefixes which likely will end up being used at the molecular level in manufacturing/supply-chain applications, lifetime assignments to individuals as a matter of citizenship which will be retired upon their deaths/disenfranchisement, nanite communications used to do things like clean plaque out of people's arteries in lieu of angioplasty, and a whole host of new applications we haven't even dreamed of, yet.

The supreme irony of this situation is that folks who're convinced that there's no way we can even run out of addresses often accuse those of us who're plentitude-skeptics of old-fashioned thinking; whereas there's a strong case to be made that those very same vocal advocates of the plentitude position seem to be assuming that the assignment and consumption of IPv6 addresses (and networking technology and the Internet in general) will continue to be constrained by the current four-decade-old paradigm into the foreseeable future.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins at arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid, with millions
of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but
just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

			  -- Alan Kay





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