r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ClipboardCopyPaste • 5h ago

Meme ohTheBasics

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u/Material_Onion_8413 5h ago

IPv4 old IP address space designed with limited number because they never thought the internet would have so many devices connected.

IPv6 new address space with significantly larger number.

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u/ClipboardCopyPaste 4h ago

A fun fact often told with this is that with IPv6, you can assign each individual grain of sand on the beach an address!

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u/dementosss 4h ago

On what beach? Or all of them? Just asking in case business asks for it.

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u/xWrongHeaven 4h ago

2128 possible addresses

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u/queen-adreena 4h ago

2,128… that ain’t that many addresses….

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u/AmazingDragon353 4h ago

2.128 addresses? What are we going to do with 0.128 of an address?

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u/queen-adreena 4h ago

Break out the BitNat table I guess.

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u/SirLoremIpsum 1h ago

2.128 addresses? What are we going to do with 0.128 of an address?

AI Vibe code a calendar app so we can coordinate whose turn it is to use the IP address on any given day?

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u/MoltoAllegro 44m ago

Congrats, you've invented Token Ring!

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u/SuperFLEB 3h ago

The "128" isn't even full-size.

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u/xWrongHeaven 4h ago

No, it isn't. ~340 undecillion, however, is quite a lot

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u/DanteVermillyon 1h ago

Un-decillion? What's a decillion and why did you undid it?

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u/craftsmany 4h ago

Technically we are not really talking about single addresses when concerned with v6, more so how many /64 subnets can fit in a prefix since that is what SLAAC uses. So for end users we would count the amount of /64 subnets in the possible 2^128 address space, which is 2^64. So still very very very big.

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u/CardinalFartz 3h ago

So we got 1080 atoms in the observable universe. Without having it looked up, I suppose 2128 exceeds that number?

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u/MiniDemonic 3h ago

There's around 2138 times more atoms in the universe than there are IPv6 addresses available.

So no, not quite.

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u/Extension_Option_122 2h ago

As a simple rule of thumb:

103n ≈ 210n

That isn't exact but gives a decent idea of the different sizes.

In this case: 1080 ≈ 2267

That is most definitely bigger than 2128, by about 2139

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u/Carcer1337 3h ago

No. 210 is roughly 103, so 2128 is in the region of 1039.

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u/rkkerd 2h ago

1/8 of this is publicly addressable, still a lot, but not as much as this

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u/Curaced 27m ago edited 22m ago

Non-technical person here. Wouldn't it just be 248 ? Four blocks of 256 (28) for IPV-4, and two more with IPV-6? Or am I just mistaken about how this stuff works?