[ale] V6 question

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Tue, 2011-02-08 at 10:37 -0500, Greg Freemyer wrote: 
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Michael H. Warfield <mhw at wittsend.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-02-08 at 07:25 -0500, Geoffrey Myers wrote:
> >> Greg Freemyer wrote:
> >> > NAT was designed fundamentally as a way to multiply one IP into multiple.
> >> >
> >> > That is not needed with IPv6 because you can have an IP for every hair
> >> > on your head.
> >
> >> Don't know where I read it, but I read that ipv6 will provide enough ip
> >> addresses such that you could have one ip for every square inch of the
> >> earth.  So, I assume you mean each of us would have enough IPs for every
> >> hair on each of our heads. According to google, the average person has
> >> '100.000-150.000, some estimates going up to 200.000' hairs.  On the
> >> other hand, there are 1.96 x 1017 square inches on the earth. ;)
> >
> >> So, anyone know how many ip addresses ipv6 will provide?
> >
> > End to end...
> >
> > 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
> >
> > But that number is meaningless.  Let's get to some working numbers...
> >
> > Number of host addresses in a /64 subnet (local addresses on your wire -
> > network with only a single subnet):
> >
> > 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
> >
> Mike,

These are some very good questions.

> When IPv6 is truly rolled, should we expect each house with broadband
> to get a full /64?  ie.  A few hundred million /64s used just for US
> household broadband access?

We now know from Comcast that they are allocating a /64 to the customer
premise equipment as a part of their initial IPv6 roll out.  They have
not said how they will handle multple subnets or requests larger than
a /64 for advanced users or enterprises.  Most brokers provide you with
a /64 and the option to request a /56 or /48.  Even a /56 seems a bit
much for a home user.  :-P

> And would that entire /64 likely be dynamically or statically assigned
> by the ISP.  ie. How will my Comcast Cable Modem / initial router work
> from a inside my house LAN perspective.  Will I have a known /64 for
> my the long term, or might it change if I have an extended power
> outage, etc.

You will probably have a known stable /64 for long term.  To update
the /64, Comcast will have to have the router learn it's new prefix, add
routes and advertisements longer than the old prefix, deprecate the old
prefix, and then finally remove the old prefix.  This would be totally
transparent to you as a v6 user.  You don't care when your prefix
changes.  If you have servers or things in DNS, things would get more
dicey there, but we know their attitudes regarding that.  So they
"could" make it dynamic but it is more complicated to make it dynamic at
the /64 router level than it is for dhcp.  It could be that they use
some sort of setup protocol, like tsp to manage it and activate the
routing, I really don't know.  It should be interesting to see how that
plays out.

> Geoffrey, when I said you'd get billions per house, I was assuming a
> full /64 per house and my number was why off, it's 18 billion billion
> per /64!

That's billions.  That's A LOT OF BILLIONS.  Maybe you just get the
month's prize for understatement.

> Thanks
> Greg

Regards,
Mike
-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
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