Re: Why do we need to go with 128 bits address space ?

[Simon Hobson <[e-mail]>]

Fernando Gont <[e-mail]> wrote:

>> Just a bit curious about, why NOW when today’s technologies (HW/SW
>> processing capabilities as well as the ever-increasing bandwidth) are
>> more advanced compared with those at 25 years ago, suddenly people
>> become very concern with the overhead and start questioning about the
>> “extra burden” caused by the packet address/header length…
> 
> One possible answer: IoT.

Possibly.
But consider that even the lowest spec IoT things these days are likely to have more resources (memory, processing, bandwidth) than even mid range desktops of 25 years ago.
When I think back to what I was doing back then, most of our customers weren't "online" or networked at all, where things were networked it was typically 230kbps (Apple's LocalTalk) to share a laser printer, a very small number had some ethernet and that was 10Mbps, we still measured RAM and disk capacities on MB, and CPU speeds in MHz. I now carry around in my pocket a (not very up to date) mobile that has more of everything (more CPU, more memory, more storage, more pixels of more colours, more connectivity) than any of the systems I was installing for customers back then.

If people are using IoT and lack of resources as a reason for wanting to reduce the size of IP addresses, then it's because they've become lazy and profligate with resource usage, not because there's actually any real limitation.

But as has already been said a while ago - both in this thread and the other recent one - the ship for this discussion sailed a quarter century ago and it's not coming back.