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mahboi • last Thursday at 9:44 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Nah, the details in the spec all have good reasons, but it's based on the original mistake of making it an entirely separate network from v4 with new address blocks.


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throw0101a • yesterday at 1:29 AM

> […] but it's based on the original mistake of making it an entirely separate network from v4 with new address blocks.

This was not a "mistake":

      So it's a matter of mathematical and physical fact that to expand
      the address size, you must change the protocol, and that means 
      [three] things immediately:

            You have to change the version number.

            You have to add new code to handle the new version.

      […]

            You need a coexistence technique so that updated systems, 
            with the new protocol, can connect to old systems that know 
            nothing of the new protocol.

      Two minutes of thought show that this third requirement has only 
      two solutions:

            (3A) Dual stack, in which the new machines speak both 
                 the old (IPv4) and new (IPng) protocol.

            (3B) Translation, in which something translates addresses
                 between the old and new protocols.
* https://github.com/becarpenter/misc/blob/main/why6why.md

* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc1671

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