Re: IPv6 and the "average user"

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
20 Nov 1996 16:46:51 GMT


Followup to: <199611201101.LAA11593@oberon.di.fc.ul.pt>
By author: Pedro Roque <roque@di.fc.ul.pt>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> Which is quite natural as nobody in it's right mind would want to route
> variable length addresses. Variable length fields should only exist in
> data to be processed in slow paths. Anyway, 128 bits is more than enought
> for IPv6. Note that the 32 bits where a good choice for IPv4.
>

Quite true, but the IPv6 address space is expected to be exhausted in
30 years. The switch from IPv4 to IPv6 is going to be painful, but
that is nothing compared to what switching standard protocol stacks in
the late 2020's would be like...!

You can always mitigate variable-length addresses by internal padding.

-hpa

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