[157028] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IPv4 address length technical design
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Wed Oct 3 18:26:29 2012
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <20121003T191621Z@localhost>
Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2012 15:21:54 -0700
To: Izaac <izaac@setec.org>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Oct 3, 2012, at 12:22 PM, Izaac <izaac@setec.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 03, 2012 at 06:52:57PM +0200, Seth Mos wrote:
>> "Pick a number between this and that." It's the 80's and you can
>> still count the computers in the world. :)
>=20
> And yet, almost concurrently, IEEE 802 went with forty-eight bits. Go
> figure. I'm pretty sure the explanation you're looking for is: It was
> with the word size of the most popular minis and micros at the time.
>=20
IEEE 802 was expected to provide unique numbers for all computers ever =
built.
Internet was expected to provide unique numbers for all computers =
actively on the network.
Obviously, over time, the latter would be a declining percentage of the =
former since the former is increasing and never decrements while the =
latter could (theoretically) have a growth rate on either side of zero =
and certainly has some decrements even if the increments exceed the =
decrements.
Owen
