[Noisebridge-discuss] How big is the internet? eom

[Jason Dusek]

2009/11/23 Jonathan Lassoff <jof at thejof.com>:
> Excerpts from Jason Dusek's message of Fri Nov 20 20:12:25 -0800 2009:
> > While IPv6 allows us 65K times that, it's
> > still just not that many addresses. In comparison, the number
> > of molecules in a liter of water is well over 2^84.
>
> How did you get that number? IPv4 is 2^32 (4294967296) addresses (not
> accounting for reserved space like 127/8, 224/4, etc.) and IPv6 is
> 2^128 (340282366920938463463374607431768211456) addresses (again,
> counting everything and not just global unicast space).
>
> That like 18446744078004518913 times bigger, no?

  I thought IPv6 just had 6 bytes instead of 4. I looked it up
  in Wikipedia and it turns out, you're right. The richer
  address space of IPv6 can indeed provide addresses for every
  molecule in a liter of water -- and then some.

  It always seemed to me like a totally crazy/stupid initiative:
  to change everything just to add two lousy bytes. Thanks for
  your correction.

--
Jason Dusek