Re: [wg-c] IPv6

[Karl Auerbach <karl@CaveBear.com>]

> [London] BT is teaming up with Microsoft to trial an IPv6 network, the next
> generation internet protocol which will create an infinite number of new
> web addresses. 

IPv6 has many good things and there were recent announcements on it from
major players (Microsoft and Cisco among them).

But to set one thing straight: IPv6 does have enough address space to
enumerate every electron in the universe.  However, IPv6 brings little
magic to the issue of coelescing routing tables, hence it will continue to
be very important that addresses be allocated in accordance with the
existing topology of the net.  End-user allocations of addresses may not
need to be as tightly constrained as they are with IPv4, but there will
still have to be a rational allocation system.

As far as DNS and IPv6 - the increase in addresses will have little impact
on the DNS name space(s).  And to the extent that IPv6 addresses occupy 4x
the number of bytes as IPv4 addresses, the 13 server per zone limit in DNS
will be squeezed more as IPv6 comes about unless the ancient and obsolete
512 byte limit on DNS packets is relaxed.

		--karl--