[blackflame7000]

There's something to be said for aesthetics when it comes to anything human. IPv6 appears far more complex than the traditional 4 octets and its an immediate turn-off especially to those (most) who don't know that octal and hexadecimal are just different ways of representing the same thing. If they simply would have extended IPv4 to 8 octets (64 bits) I think that would have been a better middle ground solution from an intuitive standpoint. 128bit addressing is overkill and I doubt we will still be using the Internet Protocol if 2^128 (3.4X10^38) devices are ever online.

[vetinari]

It's not "real" 128-bit addressing; for addressing routable networks you have only 64 bits. The rest is for devices inside that network. Additionally, it is quite possible that any single device will have more than one IP (with SLAAC, it can ask for how many it needs. With DHCPv6, it can be limited, and that's exactly why Android doesn't support it. Your cellphone company would be able to prevent you from tethering). There's no NAT, so you can't hide a network behind a single IP.

[delinka]

“There's no NAT...”

Are you saying that NAT is technically impossible with IPv6? Because I have doubts about such a statement.

[vetinari]

Not imposible, but brings more problems than it solves. It's better to forget, that it exists.

RFC6296, by Cisco.

[jsjohnst]

> There's no NAT, so you can't hide a network behind a single IP.

NAT66 disagrees with you. It’s been in the Linux kernel since version 3.7.

Whether you should do it is a different question, but saying NAT capabilities don’t exist with IPv6 is incorrect.

[vetinari]

Have you ever seen that in the wild? I consider myself happy, that I didn't.

[garaetjjte]

There are 128 bits for more flexible subnetting, not for 2^128 devices. There is even recommendation to not assign less than /48 for single site. (and absolutely not less than /64, because SLAAC won't work)