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by Dylan16807 315 days ago
It's you.

8 versus 16 bytes barely matters for using the addresses, especially because if you're assigning IPs to your devices you can have the second half of the address start with 6-7 zero bytes and collapse them all with ::

And I challenge you to name a way to be "somewhat backward compatible" that would actually function and IPv6 doesn't already do.
1 comments
saulpw 315 days ago
The design of IPv6 is for computers, not for humans. How do you even say an IPv6 address aloud? You need to be able to communicate "192 dot 168 dot 50 dot 1" over a voice medium.
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Dylan16807 315 days ago
That has very little to do with 8 versus 16 bytes.

Edit: And not only can you make your own addresses short, if I look up some IPv6 addresses meant to be said/remembered (public DNS IPs), none of them make you type more than 8 bytes (and that one repeats a cluster to make it easier) and some make you type as little as 4 bytes.

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herczegzsolt 315 days ago
If your IPv6 address is more complicated than your password, you have bigger problems.

Remembering and communicating mildly complex byte sequences should be an issue which is solved already.

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deathanatos 315 days ago
> Remembering and communicating mildly complex byte sequences should be an issue which is solved already.

It is solved already, it's called DNS.

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userbinator 315 days ago
...except when DNS doesn't work.

IPv4 addresses are not any more difficult to remember than phone numbers, but the same can't be said of IPv6.

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wredcoll 315 days ago
I agree, lets limit the total number of internet devices to 4 billion just in case we need to memorize one of the addresses.

The other 4 billion people on the planet don't really need internet connections do they?

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saulpw 315 days ago
The counter-proposal to IPv6's 128-bits was 64-bits. This is 16 quintillion devices, which seems fine.

Doubling the address space is a good strategy when you need more. Quadrupling it is over-engineering.

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homebrewer 315 days ago
Diceware is way easier to share over the phone than any IPv6 address (except for the few vanity ones like Google's 2001:4860:4860::8888 — then it's only slightly easier).

https://www.eff.org/dice

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