On 07.08.2012, at 00:02, Martin Rex wrote: > Steven Bellovin wrote: >> >> Randy Bush wrote: >>> >>> whatever the number of address bits, if it is fixed, we always run out. >>> memory addressing has been a cliff many times. ip addressing. ... >> >> Yup. To quote Fred Brooks on memory address space: "Every successful >> computer architecture eventually runs out of address space" -- and I heard >> him say that in 1973. > > I'm wondering what resource shortage would have happened if IPv6 > had been massively adopted 10 years earlier, and whether we would have > seen the internet backbone routers suffer severely from the size > of the routing tables, if every single home customer (DSL subscriber) > would have required a provider-independent IPv6 network prefix rather > than a single, provider-dependent IPv4 IP Address. ... add to that: what would have happened if the IETF had not underestimated the life expectancy of IPv4 address space so drastically and consequently had taken the time to design a better IPv6 with things like wire compatibility with IPv4, better routing and other features that make ISPs want to deploy it. Ah - what if ....... . Amusing musings but not more than that. Daniel