A Reddit post from user Accendil on the r/theydidthemath community.

Posted on December 31, 2014
https://redd.it/2qxgxw

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I've been a lover of IP addressing for many years, since I was in high school. I always found it funny how IPv4 had so few addresses because of the unexpected take off of the "internet".

I then started looking in to IPv6 and this was my first foray into mega numbers which lead me down a slippery slope of Googolplexes and Infinity but IPv6 is my first love. Here is some info related to IP addressing (heavily rounded for ease of viewing):


IPv4 = 2^32
4,290,000,000
| | | Hundreds
| | Thousands
| Millions
Billions

IPv6 = 2^128
340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
| | | | | | | | | | | | Hundreds
| | | | | | | | | | | Thousands
| | | | | | | | | | Millions
| | | | | | | | | Billions
| | | | | | | | Trillions
| | | | | | | Quadrillions
| | | | | | Quintillions
| | | | | Sextillion
| | | | Septillions
| | | Octillion
| | Nonillion
| Decillion
Undecillion


Comparison to humans:

1.1. Estimated population of Earth (~2014)
7,210,000,000

1.2. Average number of molecules in an average human body
156,000,000,000,000

1.3. Average number of atoms in an average human body 5,940,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

1.4. Estimated number of atoms in the current human race 42,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000


Comparison to things:

2.1. All the grains of sand on Earth
7,500,000,000,000,000,000

2.2. All the stars in the universe
70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

2.3. Diameter of the observable universe (in millimetres!!) 92,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000


Side-by-side comparison to humans:

v6 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
1.1 7,210,000,000
1.2 156,000,000,000,000
1.3 5,940,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
1.4 42,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
| | | |
| Octillions | Billions
Undecillions Trillions

This means we can give about 7 IPv6 addresses to each atom in the entire human race! Or, you could give each person Earth right now this many IPv6 addresses:

47,261,439,850,130,342,147,690,917,698
|
Octillion


Side-by-side comparison to things:

v6 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
2.1 | 7,500,000,000,000,000,000
2.2 | 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
2.3 | 92,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
| | | |
Undecillions| | Quintillions
| Sextillions
Octillions

You could therefore give each grain of sand this many IPv6 addresses:

45,300,000,000,000,000,000
|
Quintillion

Or even more magnificently, this means you can give every millimetre from one side of the universe to the opposite side of the universe in a straight line about 3.6 billion IPv6 addresses... every... millimetre...

...aaaand now my head hurts so I'll leave it there.


u/accendil on r/theydidthemath
https://redd.it/2qxgxw

... No. of IPv6 Addresses: 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Northern Realms (618:400/23)

Warpslide wrote to All <=-

I've been a lover of IP addressing for many years, since I was in high school. I always found it funny how IPv4 had so few addresses because
of the unexpected take off of the "internet".

The US government still owns about 30% of the IPv4 block. However, with
NAT, that's not an issue. IPv6 has a very slow adoption rate in the US
because of NAT and the high cost of switching to IPv6-enabled commercial equipment.

My own ISP uses IPv6 externally, but internally, it's all IPv4.

Trying to manually subnet a IPv6 address is damn near impossible.

-- Sean

... My other computer...hey, where IS my other computer?
--- MultiMail/Linux
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

Warpslide wrote to All <=-

A Reddit post from user Accendil on the r/theydidthemath community.

Posted on December 31, 2014
https://redd.it/2qxgxw

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= -=-=-

I've been a lover of IP addressing for many years, since I was in high school. I always found it funny how IPv4 had so few addresses because
of the unexpected take off of the "internet".

Interesting post - thanks for sharing. IPv6 feels very old-school, the intention was to put everything on the internet and to make everything
directly accessible. This was long before the botnet era - imagine if
every device on your LAN had an external IP?

I wonder if the proliferation of NAT as a way of working around IPV4
address exhaustion has helped make us a network of content consumers, not participants in a greater experiment.

One thing I'd alway heard about IPV4 is that part of the problem was the inequality of IP space allocation. Doesn't GE have an entire class A? I
know some earlier companies have entire class Bs, like BBN?





--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (618:300/16)

Re: Re: Just how big is IPv6?
By: digimaus to Warpslide on Mon Dec 23 2024 05:00 pm

Howdy,

Trying to manually subnet a IPv6 address is damn near impossible.

What do you mean?

I use /112's and /88's a lot...


...oEoN
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (618:510/2)

Re: Re: Just how big is IPv6?
By: Kurt Weiske to Warpslide on Mon Dec 23 2024 03:22 pm

Howdy,

Interesting post - thanks for sharing. IPv6 feels very old-school, the intention was to put everything on the internet and to make everything directly accessible. This was long before the botnet era - imagine if
every device on your LAN had an external IP?

Well the design of IP6 is that everything does have an external IP, and the role of the router changes from being a NAT router/firewall, to just a router/firewall.

I'm looking forward to the day we can turn of IP4 - and I know it probably will be a long time before we get there - but maintaining 2 addresses technologies is a pain.


...oEoN
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (618:510/2)

Hello Kurt!

23 Dec 24 15:22, you wrote to Warpslide:

I wonder if the proliferation of NAT as a way of working around IPV4 address exhaustion has helped make us a network of content consumers,
not participants in a greater experiment.

That is why NAT was developed and why IPv6 adoption has been so slow for the last 20+ years.

One thing I'd alway heard about IPV4 is that part of the problem was
the inequality of IP space allocation. Doesn't GE have an entire class
A? I know some earlier companies have entire class Bs, like BBN?

The feds own over 30% of the IPv4 Class A blocks.

-- Sean


... "A handful of good life is better than a bushel of learning." - George Herbert
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240209
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

Hello Deon!

24 Dec 24 14:09, you wrote to digimaus:

I use /112's and /88's a lot...

Good for you. It's difficult for me.

-- Sean

... What orators lack in depth they make up in length.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240209
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

Deon George wrote to Kurt Weiske <=-

I'm looking forward to the day we can turn of IP4 - and I know it
probably will be a long time before we get there - but maintaining 2 addresses technologies is a pain.

Especially when the Internet Service Providers (excuse me, online
content providers) can do workarounds cheaper that preserve "their" idea
of us as content consumers instead of nodes participating in an
internetwork.

In 20 years, we could either see widespread adoption of IPv6 and a new generation of network, or ISPs throwing carrier grade NAT everywhere,
locking down the ability of consumers to self-publish content
and self-host (Because, "Liabilities") and charging a premium for the
same IPV4 address that they used to "give away" for free.

Enshittify the internet then charge extra for the solution, that seems
to be a pattern.



--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (618:300/16)

digimaus wrote to Warpslide <=-

My own ISP uses IPv6 externally, but internally, it's all IPv4.

If I set up IPv6 on my WAN interface, I get an IPv6 address, but never
figured out what to do with it - and when I run IPv6 tests, it complains
my ISP isn't fully configured for it.

Whenever I get an IPv6 address, I get a netmail from one of the Fido
guys about configuring my BBS for it - I guess they look for fido nodes
with IPv6 addresses for a list they keep?



--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (618:300/16)

Re: Re: Just how big is IPv6?
By: Kurt Weiske to digimaus on Tue Dec 24 2024 10:41 am

Howdy,

If I set up IPv6 on my WAN interface, I get an IPv6 address, but never figured out what to do with it - and when I run IPv6 tests, it complains
my ISP isn't fully configured for it.

I agree with Sean's sentiment, that configuring IP6 can be confusing, because firstly its differnent to IP4, and secondly because to use it you need to configure your side of the router to use it (instead of using what the router uses for IP4 which is normally a 192.168... address from the factory - ie: turn on a use).

Fortunately, many PCs and servers automatically start to use it - its the router part that can be complicated.

Happy to try and help you use it if you want, but might not be worth the effort, if any internet site you visit is not IP6 enabled. Many here in Oz arent, and until they are, there really isnt any reason to change.


...oEoN
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (618:510/2)

On 24 Dec 24 10:41:38, Kurt Weiske said the following to Digimaus:

If I set up IPv6 on my WAN interface, I get an IPv6 address, but never figured out what to do with it - and when I run IPv6 tests, it complains
my ISP isn't fully configured for it.

IPV6 is incredibly overrated... and in my case, unnecessary for a long time to come as my ISP has no plans with it.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)

Hello Kurt!

24 Dec 24 10:41, you wrote to Deon George:

In 20 years, we could either see widespread adoption of IPv6 and a new generation of network, or ISPs throwing carrier grade NAT everywhere, locking down the ability of consumers to self-publish content
and self-host (Because, "Liabilities") and charging a premium for the
same IPV4 address that they used to "give away" for free.

My ISP gives me a public facing "static" IPv4 address for $5 a month. They charge $5 to pay for the extra Juniper router they bought to do this.

Very few people request this feature from what their tech support tells me. Only those of us who run a server of any kind. Evidently Minecraft servers are very popular.

"Static" being a very long TTL on a DHCP address.

-- Sean

... "All progress springs from me." - Anonymous
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240209
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

Hello Kurt!

24 Dec 24 10:41, you wrote to digimaus:

digimaus wrote to Warpslide <=-

If I set up IPv6 on my WAN interface, I get an IPv6 address, but never figured out what to do with it - and when I run IPv6 tests, it
complains my ISP isn't fully configured for it.

pfSense will tell me it fails to get an IPv6 DHCP IP from my ISP. Only IPv4.

Whenever I get an IPv6 address, I get a netmail from one of the Fido
guys about configuring my BBS for it - I guess they look for fido
nodes with IPv6 addresses for a list they keep?

No clue. Talk to Andrew; he is our resident IPv6 fanatic. He's running an IPv6<->IPv4 tunnel.

-- Sean

... Clones are people two.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240209
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

Hello Nick!

24 Dec 24 17:02, you wrote to Kurt Weiske:

IPV6 is incredibly overrated... and in my case, unnecessary for a long time to come as my ISP has no plans with it.

With IPv4 NAT, a lot of the big ISPs here in the US are lathe to change. I can't speak for anywhere else though.

-- Sean

... "I cannot live without books." - Thomas Jefferson
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20240209
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (618:618/1)

On 24 Dec 2024, Deon George said the following...

I use /112's and /88's a lot...

I've been playing around with subnetting IPv6 here, my ISP gives me one /64 by default (18,446,744,073,709,551,616 or 18.4 quintillion usable host addresses).

I also discovered if I set my wan interface to request a /48 they'll give me one of those as well. A /48 has 65,536 /64 subnets.

I initially tried setting my config to request a /62 (4 /64s) and /61 (8 /64s) but it didn't seem to work, not sure if its my EdgeRouter 4 or my ISP that doesn't support them but a /48 works fine.

This is when I started doing some reading on just how many addresses are available in IPv6. I was initially concerned about hoarding
1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 (1.2 septillion) addresses, and for some reason still am, probably just "old" thinking. 1.2 septillion addresses is a mere 0.0000000000000036% of the total IPv6 address space. Numbers this big really boggle (my|the) mind.

I have 4 vlans here at home, each of them has their own /64 (with 65,532 other /64s just waiting to be allocated).

I could try slicing up one /64 into 4 /66s or something, not sure if my router supports that, but could be a fun exercise to try and see what happens. I suppose I really don't need to be concerned with hoarding/wasting such a "small" number of addresses.


Jay

... Some of the crowd have decided to voice their opinion by staying away

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Northern Realms (618:400/23)

Re: Re: Just how big is IPv6?
By: Warpslide to Deon George on Wed Dec 25 2024 09:24 am

Howdy,

I initially tried setting my config to request a /62 (4 /64s) and /61 (8 /64s) but it didn't seem to work, not sure if its my EdgeRouter 4 or my ISP that doesn't support them but a /48 works fine.

Yeah, I havent got to work out how the backend works - but I see a similar result.

My ISP gives me a /60, and I've played around requesting a /63, /62, and I still get the /60.

I could try slicing up one /64 into 4 /66s or something, not sure if my router supports that, but could be a fun exercise to try and see what happens. I suppose I really don't need to be concerned with hoarding/wasting such a "small" number of addresses.

For the most, and on a VLAN, you'd probably want to stick to a /64 - it'll makes auto configuration easy - and just works. IE: Plug in device, select IP6 and magically it gets one and routing.

Anything less than a /64, you'll need to manage the gateway and routing yourself.

In my case, I play with docker - and containers can have their own IP6 address on their own virtual network. Which is where I use /112s - still gives each docker network 65,535 addresses, and you generally would only use a few on each network :) And since a docker host can potentially have many networks, inside it, I route the /88 to the docker host - manually configured on my router. In reality, I could reduce this to a /96 or even smaller.

The first thing to help, is your gateway address is a link-local fe80::/10, not the first (or last) address in the subnet (which we traditionally do with ip4), and you get that from the device you are routing to after its IP6 stack is running. Generally you dont need to configure the routing back, because it will get that from SLAAC (/64 setup).

happens. I suppose I really don't need to be concerned with hoarding/wasting such a "small" number of addresses.

One of the things I'm liking, and it might just be a conincidence, I see many less bot probs on IP6. The address space is just too big for somebody to probe each one :)


...oEoN
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (618:510/2)

Re: Re: Just how big is IPv6?
By: Kurt Weiske to Warpslide on Mon Dec 23 2024 03:22 pm

Interesting post - thanks for sharing. IPv6 feels very old-school, the intention was to put everything on the internet and to make everything directly accessible. This was long before the botnet era - imagine if
every device on your LAN had an external IP?

I tend to think IPv6 is a clear example of modern overdesigned engineering that takes power from end users and puts it in the hand of the comitee that designed the thing.

IPv6 is fine and dandy until you try to break your home LAN into Internet routable subnets without doing any patchwork. In theory it is easy to do. In practice, it fails because it requires so many more moving parts to be put together than IPv4 and also requires collaboration from your ISP.

This is: if your ISP does not give you proper prefix delegation - which most don't seem to do - you are not going to create proper subnets at layer 3. Period. I guess their idea is you create a layer 2 network for each subnet you need and buy extra prefixes from the ISP.

Seriously, whoever designed this can choke on my cock.

Devices having an external IP is not *too* bad as long as you have proper firewalling in place, but to be honest, once you set an inbound firewall you are killing the selling point of IPv6, which was to offer universally reachable endpoints everywhere. The main issue with a real IPv6 per device is all the tracking that ISP and websites can do, but with the privacy extensions supported by the protocol it does not get worse than current tracking on IPv4.


--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (618:250/24)

Re: Just how big is IPv6?
By: Sean Dennis to Nick Andre on Wed Dec 25 2024 01:20 am

With IPv4 NAT, a lot of the big ISPs here in the US are lathe to change. I can't speak for anywhere else though.

Here in Spain they are rolling something called DS-Lite. As an aproximation, you can think of it like a plan in which you have a Carrier Grade NAT area that gets tunneled over IPv6 on the ISP end.

You end up having IPv4 access through and endpoint set by the ISP and IPv6 from a "conventional" IPv6 network.

Small providers are skipping the whole thing and staying with IPv4 because there is virtually no demand among consumers. At the clinic we have a business plan with a static IPv4. It is worth mentioning consumer-grade plans from this ISP include IPv6 but professional plans are IPv4 only.


--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (618:250/24)

Re: Re: Just how big is IPv6?
By: Arelor to Kurt Weiske on Thu Dec 26 2024 11:25 am

Howdy,

I tend to think IPv6 is a clear example of modern overdesigned engineering that takes power from end users and puts it in the hand of the comitee that designed the thing.

Can say I agree with anything in this mail - its certainly not my experience with IP6.

I actually like it, I think it provides more benefits than IP4 - but the only hurdle is that both are still in play.

I look forward to the day that we only have 1 address scheme. I actually dont mind if it is IP4 or IP6 - cant imagine it will be anytime soon though.

I can use both to my advantage. I think they should have bit the bullet and given companies a short period of time to switch over. The first company to make a citizen friendly router would be a market leader.




...oEoN
--- SBBSecho 3.23-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (618:510/2)

Here in Spain they are rolling something called DS-Lite. As an aproximation,

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Nintendo already did that. ;)

ISP include IPv6 but professional plans are IPv4 only.

I don't see the need for the jump to IPv6 ....

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)

On 26 Dec 24 19:36, T.J. Mcmillen said the following to Arelor:

I don't see the need for the jump to IPv6 ....

Me neither. If my ISP ever forced me to do so, so be it. My router is ready.

But "until then" things are perfectly fine here with IPV4.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)

Hi Nick,
In a message to T.J. Mcmillen you wrote:

I don't see the need for the jump to IPv6 ....

Me neither. If my ISP ever forced me to do so, so be it. My router is ready.

I know when I was with Fido (before they shut down) I got an ipv6 address
but since I switched to bell I don't think I do. Or at least it's a hybrid fake one of some sort.

As I only run "servers" for internal use I'm really indifferent to it all.

But "until then" things are perfectly fine here with IPV4.

Agreed.

Shawn

... Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.


--- Grumble
* Origin: Dirty Ole' Town (618:618/12)