[Wiltshire] IPv6 was Re: August meeting

[David Corking]

Yesterday, David Fletcher wrote:

> For my domestic purposes, a block of, say, 128 IPV6 addresses would be
> adequate x8 for me.

If I recall correctly, (I expect it is documented somewhere) each
residential customer gets a full 64 bits of address space to allow
each device to configure itself with a fixed routable IP address based
on its MAC address.   Otherwise you have manual configuration, or
dynamic IP allocation, neither of which is very convenient.

It is designed to accommodate the future.   Already many UK households
have an order of magnitude more addressable devices at home than they
had when IPv6 was approved - think of mobile and WiFi phones, games
consoles, handheld games, netbooks, printers and
networked-attached-storage.  I am sure consumer electronics fans will
be delighted when all our bluetooth devices, like cameras headsets and
photo frames, are addressable (with appropriate firewalls), as well as
our multimedia stuff (TVs, stereos, set top boxes.)   I forecast this
will continue to increase for some time without anyone buying the
legendary networked refrigerator.

The rule is here, but not the rationale:
http://www.ripe.net/info/faq/rs/ipv6.html#15

If you get allocated a slightly larger network than /64, (anything up
to a /48 without a written justification to RIPE,) you can do some
simple subnetting (perhaps it will be appropriate to use different
subnets for VLANs or different WiFi wavebands, or to allow your dinner
party guests to share your broadband access without viewing your
family photo collection.)

One final thought - in 2030, when every home has a cluster of
supercomputers to do (say) custom protein interaction simulations -
will we run out of addresses again?

David