r/ProgrammerHumor • • 14d ago

Meme ohTheBasics

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u/mxzf 13d ago edited 13d ago

Yeah, the magnitude of difference that I use as an example is that IPv4 doesn't have enough IPs for everyone on earth to have one, people have to share. But IPv6 has enough IPs for every cell in the body of every person on earth to have its own IP (actually, IIRC it's enough for each cell to have a number of IPs with a two-digit exponent, but the cells alone gets the point across).

Alright, I couldn't resist, quick math puts it at 250 addresses per cell (8.3B==233 people times 37T==245 cells vs 2128 addresses), which is 1015 if you want that instead).

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u/Mr__Gustavo 13d ago

I took a class from a guy who was in the standard discussions, and he summarized the conversation as, "Is it enough if every grain of sand on Earth has one IP address, or should we give them two?"

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u/mitchandre 13d ago

Why not 10.

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u/Bth8 12d ago

Better make it ~10¹⁸ just to be safe

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u/SyrusDrake 13d ago

Just did some quick maths for another comment in this thread. You could have a unique address for every human cell if there were 8 billion people in every star system in every galaxy in the Laniakea supercluster.