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HappMacDonaldtoday at 1:41 PM1 replyview on HN

If only someone would just bump up the size of the address space, so that there would be enough to go around again.

I mean, it's kinda like Y2K, isn't it? We're stuck with this old addressing scheme that chose 32 bits per address back when that was a lot for any computer to comfortably handle. But today if we used up twice.. no, even four times as many bits no PC would bat an eyelash and the increase in address space would be truly exponential.

It's just a shame that so much built infrastructure expects the current addressing system that it would probably take a life time to phase out. Plus that if anyone tried to rebuild it from scratch they would probably forget to make it backwards compatible, and also change so many things about it that it becomes a nightmare for anyone to try to implement. It's like trying to pass a new law and it gets infected by death-by-a-thousand-riders as a prerequisite to passing. :'(


Replies

NetOpWibbytoday at 3:45 PM

We could just use IPv6, no?