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Comment by KerrAvon | Hacker News Reader

The IPv4 address field is fixed size. You can't simply add a digit and deal with it at the telephony company premises like you can with a phone number. You have to rev every piece of equipment and software that can ever touch a packet. At that point, why are you not also fixing other architectural flaws and ensuring that the address space is large enough to accommodate any future needs?

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One interesting thing about this idea is that, from a higher level, that's exactly how IPv6 works; the "leading zero" is the IP protocol version field. If that leading zero, er IPv4, is there, the fields of the IP packet are interpreted using IPv4 semantics. If the version field is IPv6, then the IP packet is interpreted using IPv6 semantics.

This is how you configure telephone dial plans. Earlier dialed numbers influence the interpretation of later numbers. You dial a 1, an area code is expected next. You dial 9, you get an outline line. Dial plans are a pretty decent setup and allow scoped dialing, but are limited in their extensibility (you can't have a local number start with 1). In IP, the IP protocol version field influences the interpretation of later fields, logically similar to dial plans.

> The IPv4 address field is fixed size.

So?

Make it bigger, call it IPv7, then enjoy.

IPv6 has 128 bits for addresses, why can't IPv7 have 128 bits as well, but still use more familiar patterns/techniques borrowed from IPv4?

IPv6 threw just about everything out the window... for what reason? Two decades of confusion and resistance...

I think at this point in time, people are afraid to say "ya, we overthought the hell out of IPv6".

Nothing in the world can work with IPv7. That means need to update all the software and replace all the hardware. This takes years of effort, and years of time.

What more familiar techniques? How are they going to be worth the millions of man-hours to implement? How are they going to be so much better that people will abandon IPv6 and switch from IPv4? Could this be accomplished by changing part of IPv6?

It is quite possible that you are using IPv6 to access Hacker News without knowing it.

> Nothing in the world can work with IPv7. That means need to update all the software and replace all the hardware. This takes years of effort, and years of time.

Uh, you mean like IPv6?

IPv6 once was new, and it was radical at the time (still mostly is). IPv4 should have just been extended to a 128 bit address space, breaking changes implemented around that, and then everything else would have been easier to adopt. No relearning everything - just rationalizing about larger address space.

> It is quite possible that you are using IPv6 to access Hacker News without knowing it.

No I am not, because our IT Dept. disables IPv6 on all workstations and doesn't support them at our gateways. IPv6 was the culprit in a lot of networking issues that just magically "go away" when disabled... so, they disable.

The decades and decades of knowledge built around IPv4 is immense. IPv6 asked everyone to forget almost all of it and start over. It's really not surprising IPv6 is still not well adopted...

>IPv6 was the culprit in a lot of networking issues that just magically "go away" when disabled... so, they disable

Why do you think your IPv7 will magically just work? There will be problems with it and IT departements will still disable it.

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