Waste will kill ipv6 too

Thu Dec 21 00:59:13 UTC 2017

The "minimum" network size for IPv4 is a /29
The "Minimum" network size for IPv6 is a /64

That means that IPv6 has 2**(64-29) more minimal sized networks that IPv4 (the fact that the size of those networks is different is immaterial).

2**(64-29) is 34,359,738,368 or 3.4e10

That is quite a few more networks.

Even the currently allocated space contains 2,147,483,648 times the number of "minimum sized networks" as IPv4.

---
The fact that there's a Highway to Hell but only a Stairway to Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.

>-----Original Message-----
>From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Mel Beckman
>Sent: Wednesday, 20 December, 2017 14:39
>To: William Herrin
>Cc: nanog at nanog.org
>Subject: Re: Waste will kill ipv6 too
>
>Bill,
>
>You are correct.
>
>As a double check, I divided 340282366920938463463374607431768211456
>by 4294967296, getting
>79228162514264<tel:79%20228%20162%20514%20264>337593543950336<tel:337
>%20593%20543%20950%20336>, which is 28.8 orders of magnitude :)
>
> -mel
>
>On Dec 20, 2017, at 12:58 PM, William Herrin
><bill at herrin.us<mailto:bill at herrin.us>> wrote:
>
>On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 1:48 PM, Mel Beckman
><mel at beckman.org<mailto:mel at beckman.org>> wrote:
>I won’t do the math for you, but you’re circumcising the mosquito
>here. We didn’t just increase our usable space by 2 orders of
>magnitude. It’s increased more than 35 orders of magnitude.
>
>Hi Mel,
>
>The gain is just shy of 29 orders of magnitude. 2^128 / 2^32 =
>7.9*10^28.
>
>There are 2^128 = 3.4*10^38 IPv6 addresses, but that isn't 38 "orders
>of magnitude." Orders of magnitude describes a difference between one
>thing and another, in this case the IPv4 and IPv6 address spaces.
>
>
>Using a /64 for P2P links is no problem, really. Worrying about that
>is like a scuba diver worrying about how many air molecules are
>surrounding the boat on the way out to sea.
>
>It's not a problem, exactly, but it cuts the gain vs. IPv4 from ~29
>orders of magnitude to just 9 orders of magnitude. Your link which
>needed at most 2 bits of IPv4 address space now consumes 64 bits of
>IPv6 address space.
>
>Then we do /48s from which the /64s are assigned and we lose another
>3 or so orders of magnitude... Sparsely allocate those /48s for
>another order of magnitude. From sparsely allocated ISP blocks for
>another order of magnitude. It slips away faster than you might
>think.
>
>Regards,
>Bill Herrin
>
>
>--
>William Herrin ................
>herrin at dirtside.com<mailto:herrin at dirtside.com>
>bill at herrin.us<mailto:bill at herrin.us>
>Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>