Threads that never end (was: Waste will kill ipv6 too)

Tue Jan 2 18:37:22 UTC 2018

On January 1, 2018 at 22:09 trelane at trelane.net (Andrew Kirch) wrote:
 > Lets say the worst case scenario is that we exhaust IPv6 at a rate
 > MASSIVELY higher than planned.  Can't we all just do this again in like 80
 > years?  I don't get why anyone cares so much that this thread won't die.
 > 
 > Speaking of dying, I'll be dead by then anyway.

One more time, the concern is not running out of ~2^128 addresses per se.

The concern is running out of 128 bits due to segmentation and sparse
allocations. A few bits for this (my unfounded example was handing the
ITU a /8 for re-allocation as they see fit), a few bits for that, etc.

Who was it who owned 2 x /8s of IPv4 space? AT&T? HP? Someone, I could
look it up. What was the utilization of those blocks? And multicast,
and 1914 space, and on and on.

When one thinks of it like that, as chunks of the 128 bits, it doesn't
look so vast, and it feels more vulnerable to politics, for example
some nation demanding they act as their own RIR with a large
allocation block, or just some clever new use, address blocks as
cryptocurrency, address blocks with special, magical security
policies, experimental uses, etc.

Time, and howlings of pain should it come to that, will tell.

At this point in time it's just dark speculation.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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