On Aug 7, 2011, at 3:09 PM, Jonathon Exley wrote:
This has probably been said before, but it makes me uncomfortable to think of everybody in the world being given /48 subnets by default. All of a sudden that wide expanse of 2^128 IP addresses shrinks to 2^48 sites. Sure that's still 65535 times more than 2^32 IPv4 addresses, but wouldn't it be wise to apply some conservatism now to allow the IPv6 address space to last for many more years? After all, there are only 4 bits of IP version field so the basic packet format won't last forever.
Let's look at this realistically. In 30+ years of internet development, giving IP addresses to lots of things besides just single sites, we still haven't completely used up the 32 bit space. This includes reserving 1/16th of it for unknown purposes that are never to be. 65,536 times enough space for all the sites we deployed in 30+ years will more than likely outlast the lifetime of the protocol, so, yeah, I'm OK with giving every end-site in the world (note an end-site is not a person, it's a building, structure, or tenant in a multi-tenant building or structure). Owen P.S. Jonathon: If anything in your email was confidential, too bad. You posted it to a public list. Silly notice at the bottom to that effect removed.