Industry agrees - IPv6 transition plan needed

Media Release - 15 December 2008


IPv6 supports a much larger pool of addresses, enough to assign an IP address to each grain of sand in a fine layer covering the entire planet.

Does anyone else get really fed up with this analogy? Given that addresses aren't used contiguously its a really pointless thing to say; its more likely to engender thoughts of "why?" rather than "cool, must have". Better, I think, to say things like "IPv6 will enable people to easily create a home network environment with your computers, printers, personal communications devices, home theatre etc. [ie. auto-configuration], communicate and share with others using rich media [ie. no NAT] and make it more affordable to create rich content [ie. multicast, hopefully]... all without needing your ask your neighborhood geek."

If you really wanted to have a "grains of sand" sort of analogy, it would be more useful to say something like "IPv6 will have enough addresses [well, address space] to allow every person [that ever lived? --- I haven't checked this] a large network of their own."

-- 
Cameron Kerr <ckerr@cs.otago.ac.nz>
Teaching Fellow, Computer Science, University of Otago