this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
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ELI5?
There is IPv4, it's an internet address that points to a specific computer, or at least it's supposed to. IPv4 supports up to 4294967296 addresses, which might seem like a lot until you realize how many devices are connected to the internet. Almost the entire IPv4 range is full, and ISPs have resorted to letting 1 IP point to multiple computers also known as NAT. It's what your router does, and why your laptop and phone all connect to the internet using your routers' IP address. Carrier Grade NAT takes it one step further and allows hundreds or more home networks to connect from a single IP address.
CGNAT kind of sucks because you can't run servers behind them because it doesn't know which of the hundreds of computer traffic has to go to. IPv6 would solve this entire mess, but ISP's won't invest in it because they don't want to spend the money and just delay the inevitable until they have to.
True ELI5: We ran out of signs for house numbers and instead of getting new ones we started giving everyone in a street the same house number
Thank you. So in a way if the carriers upgrade their infrastructure there would be a decrease in privacy because then it’s a one-to-one correspondence between IP address and customer, but then the customer would have the ability to host servers? The one scenario where the industry dragging their heels on upgrading is actually good for the consumer (in some respects) lol
Adding commas to that number: 4,294,967,296 addresses. More humans that IP address seems like a huge miscalculation in the internet infrastructure
Who could've thought in 1981 that more than a few thosand universities would ever like to connect to the then 250 machines big ARPANET. With 4 billion addresses, there was plenty of headroom at the time.
In 50 years, when the last ISP finally switches to IPv6, we'll be wondering how short sighted we were as now every pencil has an IP address in the interplanetary compu-global-hyper-meganet.
We planned for that. We should be fine at least until we are an interstellar species. We could assign an IPV6 address to EVERY ATOM ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths. It isn’t remotely likely that we’ll run out of IPV6 addresses at any time in the future.