Monday, July 24, 2006

Article on IPv6

I found an article from the Times Online (a British paper) talking about IPv6 and how it will revolutionize the internet. Not a very good article (even ignoring the fact that I already knew most of it), but because the author obviously skimped on his research:

  • When the internet was developed in the 1980s,... — actually, it was the early '70s
  • They gave each address a "16-bit" number... — No they didn't. Each IPv4 address is a 32-bit number.
  • ...a new one was written based on "32-bit numbers" — In IPv6, each address is a 128-bit number.
  • The number given for 232 was 340,282,366,920,938, and then a bunch of zeroes, but that's not accurate. The actual number is greater than the one given by 463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456, or over 4.6 sextillion.

Obviously, with IPv6, we're going to need bigger tubes.

No comments: