[speedgoose]

Not OP nor a recognised network expert but here is my suggestion:

IPv10. The next IP version number that is unassigned, that is conveniently 4+6.

Basically something that is not breaking compatibility with IPv4 and doesn’t require those dual network stacks nonsense.

[cdchn]

How do you not break compatibility with IPv4 while also getting more bytes in the address?

[hkt]

Maybe just don't? Let it be IPv4 with more bits, the software is already there so dual stacking isn't so bad, adoption might actually be quick if people didn't have to learn much to implement it.

[superluserdo]

>Let it be IPv4 with more bits

Then it's not IPv4 and is not compatible with IPv4.

[hkt]

It'd be compatible (or trivially close) to most of the software that is required to make it work. Which is to say the cost of implementation would be low - not the case with ipv6.

[sambazi]

country codes </s>

[speedgoose]

Well again I’m not a network expert but perhaps we could look at the 240.0.0.0/4 reserved for future use block and add more address bytes in the payload or something. It’s not going to be elegant but IPv6 is kinda elegant and failed.

[growse]

This is the most hilarious "I don't understand anything about the problem, therefore I don't understand how it's hard" comment I've seen this week.

> perhaps we could look at the 240.0.0.0/4 reserved for future use block

What's the current rate of v4 address space consumption? How long will this block last?

> and add more address bytes in the payload or something.

This is, by definition, not backward compatible.

[speedgoose]

I may not have been clear enough in my suggestion. The idea would be to use this unused block as a special block. Not to fill it up with normal IPv4 allocations.

See my suggestion as some kind of NAT-PT at scale. With a better marketing name and user experience.

The problem is indeed hard because no one manage to find a solution at scale since 3 decades.

[shawabawa3]

No matter what change you make, or how you make it, if you are making more than 4B addresses routable then any existing IPv4 device will not be able to route some addresses, so you will have caused a split in the internet

This is a fundamental and unresolvable problem with "making it backwards compatible"

[speedgoose]

Wouldn't NAT be an existing and well used solution to this problem?

[growse]

> The problem is indeed hard because no one manage to find a solution at scale since 3 decades.

The problem is hard because despite everyone's wishes, it's got nothing to do with technology. All migrations are about economics and incentives, IPv6's qualities as a design (it's a long, long way from perfect, but I'd argue that it's good enough) are irrelevant.