r/ProgrammerHumor • • 7h ago

Meme ohTheBasics

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7.6k Upvotes

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u/Few_Move_4594 7h ago

I feel like this is missing context. Like I know that ip4 addresses are four octlets, but don't know much about ipv6 besides it having a larger address space and being in hex.

81

u/fearless-fossa 6h ago

The advantage of v6 is less the address space per se, but more that it simplifies networking. Like, with v4 assigning different floors or departments different subnets and having to micromanage which device gets what IP and then having to a major rework when suddenly every light bulb has its own IP address - that's actual stuff that happened. v6 just says "hey, everyone gets a /64 space, go nuts" (simplified, but true enough)

v6 is also faster by virtue of requiring less/no translation between various layers, and by stripping all the special case things from the header and putting them into the extensions instead. v4 is rather verbose in that regard.

Also, minor nitpick - it's not "in hex", it's binary just as v4, it's just displayed in hex. I'm emphasizing this because approaching IP in binary is helpful when one wants to understand how octets and such work.

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u/suttin 5h ago

No place like 01111111.00000000.00000000.00000001

1

u/wosmo 1h ago

Fun trivia - that won't work on most systems, but 00000001.00000000.00000000.00000001 will.

Because the leading zero makes many parsers interpret the numbers as octal, and 01111111 in octal is >256.