Waste will kill ipv6 too

Wed Dec 20 18:23:57 UTC 2017

On 12/17/2017 08:31 PM, Eric Kuhnke wrote:
> some fun examples of the size of ipv6:
>
> https://samsclass.info/ipv6/exhaustion-2016.htm
>
> https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/2qxgxw/self_just_how_big_is_ipv6/
>

Every time I see these "Look how many more addresses we have now with
IPv6", I just shake my head.

  Yes, the address space is very large. But, all of the protocols, all
of the addressing guides, all of the operational 'best practices', ALL
OF IT, increases by orders of magnitude the amount of waste along with
it. Call this the 'shavings', in IPv4 for example, when you assign a P2P
link with a /30, you are using 2 and wasting 2 addresses. But in IPv6,
due to ping-pong and just so many technical manuals and other advices,
you are told to "just use a /64' for your point to points. So, the
actual waste is dilutes the actual implementable size of the total ipv6
address space due to the waste component. And I have not yet seen any
study or even proposed theory to explore what the IPv6 Internet would
look like, if used in place of all IPv4 in all the places and ways that
it's used. I think, in time, we will discover that we have only
increased our usable ip space by no more than 2 orders of magnitude over
that which is achieved in ipv4, and we will be looking again at a global
ip protocol upgrade I bet within my lifetime. While we are at it, why is
nobody thinking or talking about the looming exhaustion of ieee OUI
addresses? Network cards made 15 years ago and since consigned to the
electronics scrap heap in the sky, take with them their addresses never
to be reused again (unless you are a freak like me and keep some for
'positively never assigned anywhere'). And old dead companies that were
assigned OUIs, they get 24 bits of address space to take to their
graves. We should be re-thinking mac addressing altogether too.

(Please no hate mail, these opinions are strictly mine...)

Mike-