Re: Address allocation revisited

[Valdis . Kletnieks]

On Fri, 04 Aug 2000 08:52:37 +0200, Anthony Atkielski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  said:
> Robert Book writes:
> > Vinton's idea has much merit. A scheme to allocate blocks
> > of addresses to manufacturers would be much easier to
> > support ...
> No.  This will only accelerate the exhaustion of IPv6.

Back of the envelope math time...

How many Ethernet address blocks has 3com gone through?

How many companies have been *allocated* Ethernet address blocks?

Remember that the MAC addresses can be *very* tightly allocated, with
little to no loss due to subnetting or aggregation concerns, and so
on.  You can think of it as a simple enumeration of connected items. If
you allow 48 bits for hardware address blocks, and assuming 8G people
on the planet, each one can own some 8,000 things that have addresses.

That's not enough?  Allocate another 8 bits.

How many people on the planet own 2 million ANYTHINGs?

And there's still 8 more bits in that low 64 bits.

And there's still another 64 bits for actually ROUTING.

                                Valdis Kletnieks
                                Operating Systems Analyst
                                Virginia Tech