frik

Frik 🏳️‍🌈🎗️

@frik

Inútil professional

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Marrec immadur de 25 anys. M'agrada parlar català, but I can also write stuff in English. A veces, español. Programo, faig de TO pel Rivals of Aether i soc organitzador de la site de Barcelona de la Global Game Jam.

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posts from @frik tagged #ipv6

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IPv6 is mind-numbingly huge

Accessible tech post ahead:

You've probably heard of the term "IP adress" before. Just like when you send a physical letter you have to include the recipient's address and your own address, computers have to include a method of their own to deliver and receive internet messages, except instead of a big chunk of text like "1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC", it's just a big number.

Right now (and basically since it began), we use IP version 4, which uses a 32-bit number as an address, so it goes from 0 to ~4 billion1. That's a lot, but every device connected to the internet is supposed to have an individual address2, not just every person. And last time I checked there's about double that amount of people on Earth right now. And most of us have more than one thing connected to the internet (maybe you have a phone, a computer, a router, a smart tv, a few consoles, a smart fridge, a cleaning robot, a pc at work... The list goes on...). So yeah, that's not enough.3

The next step is IPv6.4 Addresses in version 6 are 128-bit long, which is 4 times as long... But it is oh so much larger, from 0 to ~340 undecillion.5
The problem with big numbers is that our monkey brains are not built to handle them, but here's thea neat comparison that might help put it into perspective:

Earth has about 8 billion humans right now. The Milky Way is estimated to have 100 billion planets. The universe is estimated to have about 2 trillion galaxies.
Let's say that every galaxy has about the same amount of planets as ours, and that every single planet in the universe is inhabited by the same amount of people as ours.
Even then, you could give every single inhabitant 200.000 IPv6 addresses to do whatever they'd want, and you'd still have a few to spare.

  1. 4.294.967.296

  2. Okay, so it's actually an IP address per device per network it's conected to; so for example, your router should have 2 IP addresses, one to the side that's facing your ISP and another to the side that's facing your appliances. But for the most part, it's one address per device.

  3. For further reading on how we sorta-solved it, look up NAT.

  4. Well, IPv6 is already out, and it has been out for a long while. However, until every single device on earth is equipped with IPv6 functionalities, we can't "fully switch". And as long as the "full switch" doesn't happen, big tech™ won't be bothered to actually fully support IPv6.

  5. 340.282.366.920.938.463.463.374.607.431.768.211.456