Comment by WorldMaker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WorldMaker | Hacker News Reader

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> Something like IPv4, with 64 bit addressed might have been easier to push through. Eg, addresses like 123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123.

IPv6 supports dotted quad notation, if that is your problem with it. You can absolutely write a 128-bit IPv6 address with the last 32 bits in 123.123.123.123 notation if that makes you feel happier. ::ffff:123.123.123.123

Technically, there's nothing stopping you from building a quick library that translates 128-bit dotted quad to IPv6 addresses. Use something like 123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123.123 if you really want to. The 4-hex digit, colon-separated notation for IPv6 wasn't designed to make it "weirder than IPv4", but to make it easier to write/mnemonically remember than just accumulating dotted quads.

> We have jumbo frames, why not jumbo addresses?

Because there's no room. IPv4 has a fixed header size (period) and almost every field is used. IPv6 had to break compatibility in some way, no matter what, to get "jumbo addresses".

> IPv4 has a fixed header size (period)

Unless I'm mistaken, I would not say it's fixed due to the rarely used IP options field that varies depending on the IHL field. It has a variable size within a range. There might be a way to get "jumbo addresses" but it would have to be terribly hacked onto the design of the header as it is, which is one reason for IPv6's existence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_version_4#He...

My understanding of options is that many routers and/or firewalls consider it a dangerous and deprecated field and are most likely to drop packets that use them, especially when they are variably sized.

That also gets back to the point that almost all of IPv4 is too "known" as a design and every field accounted for in some router and/or firewall logic somewhere by the time IPv6 was designed.

To be honest, the hex strings make it much harder to remember imo, especially with the terrible syntax of nothing between a colon being a 0.

Even having them be 16-bit integers would've been find imo

If you think you have a better notation idea for 128-bit numbers, build your own address converter and try it?

The obvious other notations for numbers that large to compare to are the various notations people use for UUIDs/GUIDs.

I personally find IPv6's designed notations one of the easier ones to use, especially because of that :: fill with zeroes shortcut to focus on the easier separation of prefix versus suffix. (For a network you control you likely only need to remember the prefix, and then suffix is whatever numbering scheme you want to implement so it may be algorithmic and simply ordered ::1, ::2, ::3, etc. Also, the regular pattern of a colon every four hex digits versus say the strange group order of UUIDs is nice. Trying to write the notation of a UUID without software help is much more painful than IPv6 address notation, I think.) But also, I have a bit of dyscalculia (my brain catches all the individual digits in a number but not always their correct order) and hex works much better for me at remembering or visualizing long numbers.

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