[156398] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IPv6 Burgers (was: IPv6 Ignorance)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Richard Brown)
Mon Sep 17 13:50:08 2012
From: Richard Brown <richard.e.brown@dartware.com>
To: "<nanog@nanog.org>" <nanog@nanog.org>
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2012 17:48:49 +0000
In-Reply-To: <mailman.379.1347888549.8289.nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Another measure of the size of the IPv6 address space... Back on World IPv6=
Day in June 2011, Dartware had a barbecue. (Why? Because the burgers had 1=
28 (bacon) bits and we served IP(A) to drink :-) You can see some photos at=
: http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/scenes-ipv6-day-barbecue
But we came up with another interesting measure for the vastness of the IPv=
6 address space:=20
If an IPv4 hamburger patty has 2^32 (4.2 billion) unique addresses in its 1=
/4 inch thickness, how thick would an IPv6 hamburger be (with 2^128 unique =
addresses)?=20
The answer is... 53 billion light-years.=20
It's straightforward unit conversions. There are 2^96 IPv4 Hamburgers at a =
quarter-inch apiece. That's 2^96 inches/4 (2^94 inches). Switching to decim=
al units, 1.98x10^32 inches; 1.65x10^27 feet; 3.13x10^23 miles; and then co=
ntinuing to convert to light-years.
A good tool for this kind of wacky unit conversion is Frink (http://futureb=
oy.us/fsp/frink.fsp?fromVal=3D2%5E94+inches&toVal=3Dlightyears), which can =
do this in one shot. Simply enter:
From: 2^94 inches
To: lightyears
and you'll see the answer!
Rich Brown richard.e.brown@dartware.com
Dartware, LLC http://www.intermapper.com
66-7 Benning Street Telephone: 603-643-9600
West Lebanon, NH 03784-3407 Fax: 603-643-2289=
