IPv4 address length technical design

Marco Hogewoning mch-nanog at xs4all.nl
Thu Oct 4 08:31:34 UTC 2012


On Oct 4, 2012, at 12:21 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:

> IEEE 802 was expected to provide unique numbers for all computers ever built.
> 
> Internet was expected to provide unique numbers for all computers actively on the network.
> 
> Obviously, over time, the latter would be a declining percentage of the former since the former is increasing and never decrements while the latter could (theoretically) have a growth rate on either side of zero and certainly has some decrements even if the increments exceed the decrements.

Which brings the question, are we expected to ever run out of the 48 bits for mac-addresses? Of course there are exceptions, but in most cases you can probably start recycling them after a certain period. And that period could even become shorter over time, I mean what are the chances you find a iPhone 1 in your network these days?

Marco



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