Re: ITU-T Dubai Meeting and IPv15

["Andrew G. Malis" <[e-mail]>]

A 260-bit address should be sufficient to address every atom in the
universe, according to current estimates (10^78 atoms). We go there
next (plus some extra to add hierarchy), and we'll never have to worry
about addressing again.

Another alternative is self-describing variable-length addresses,
again do it once and we'll never have to worry about it again.

Cheers,
Andy

On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 12:45 PM, Worley, Dale R (Dale)
<[e-mail]> wrote:
>> From: Phillip Hallam-Baker [[e-mail]]
>>
>> As Tom Knight pointed out when the IPv4 address size was chosen, there
>> aren't enough for one for each person living on the planet.
>>
>> Remember that we are trying to build a network that is going to last
>> for hundreds if not thousands of years.
>
> Technology changes over time, and so the optimal design tradeoffs
> change over time.  When IPv4 was designed, memory, processing power,
> and transmission capacity were far more expensive than now.  Moore's
> Law suggests a factor of 2^15 between 1982 and 2012.  Before that was
> the ARPAnet, with 8 bit addresses, which lasted for around 15 years.
> Presumably IPv6 will suffice for at least another 30 years.
>
> The real issue regarding longevity is that total network overhauls
> should be infrequent enough that their amortized costs are well less
> than ongoing operational costs.  Once that has been achieved, the cost
> savings of designing a protocol with a longer usable lifetime is
> probably not worth the effort of trying to predict the future well
> enough to achieve longer lifetime.
>
> Extrapolating a 30-year lifetime for each IP version suggests that in
> 300 years we will reach the end of the usable life of IPv15 and will have
> to allocate more bits to the "version" field at the beginning of
> packets.  That'll be a mess...
>
> Dale