Nice try blaming it on people who aren't you. I did some calculations a while ago, to see how many addresses we'd need to reclaim if we kept following the same curve we're currently on.

The answer is, you're right more or less, we could probably get another nine or ten years out of it.

The catch? Within that time, we'd have to hand back every single address currently in use on the internet, including yours, mine and Slashdot.

Still, I'm up for it if you are. You go first?

Are you seriously telling me that we would have industry wide adoption of IPv6, overcoming all the technical problems with doing so (like varying failure modes and embedded operating systems), all the business problems of justifying the time and cost, all the education and training that that would entail - we could have overcome all this by spelling the addresses differently?

Because when I'm out talking to people about this sort of thing, it's not the spelling of the numbers that bothers them.

Are the moderators seriously telling me that this sort of comment is Insightful?

C'mon, guys, what we're dealing with here is not a technical problem at this stage. There's no single technical bug that is "the solution" that if only we had solved it, everyone who felt they had a reason to hold off would suddenly change their minds, throw off their chains and do all the research, training, investment, deployment and support needed make a successful swap. These things need to be done, they are real problems that need to be taken seriously and evaluated, and we're still facing that problem. Rubbish like this isn't going to help.

By the way, since we're talking - when I shorten an address twice, say down to 2001:db8::1::1, how do I tell how many zeroes I shortened from the first :: and how many from the second?

Explain to me why all that stuff needs to be upgraded, but other stuff - your stuff and my stuff - doesn't?

The IPv6 spec reserves space for the entire IPv4 network, making translation between the two a snap. Any modern OS less than 5 years old has IPv6 built in, including conversion between v4 and v6.

Ok, cool. Here's a scenario. You're on the machine you're using, right now. I'm on mine - and let's be generous, I'll run any OS you pick for me. I only have IPv6 connectivity. I want to view your website, send you an email, and chat with you over jabber. What do I need to do? Is there anything that I need you to do first?

Private addressing with NAT doesn't even need to change if you don't want to bother with it, just change your gateway IP's from v4 to v6 and there you go, bandaid applied until you actually truly need to upgrade everything.

Here's another scenario. Very similar to the above. I'm on my machine, whichever OS you pick, it's on private v4, and it's behind the NAT-PT you describe. (That transition mechanism in Network Address Translation-Protocol Translation.) Let's assume I already have a working, non-buggy NAT-PT implementation on my provider's DSL router. It's translating all my v4 packets into v6. How do I view your website?

You're right that, technically, we know how to solve all these problems. But we are a very, very long way from being able to deliver products that will work, and will interoperate with the existing network that's there.

Yeah, I did some calculations on this. Took the usage numbers that are used to calculate the exhaustion date and dropped them into excel - then expanded it out further, to see how long we can last if we reclaim some /8s.

If we assume that 33 /8s are unusuable, so but claim back every other address on the internet in time for it to be reused - every single one, including yours and mine - then we run out of our second internet's worth of IPv4 addresses in September 2019.

Nine years and nine months more, if you reclaim not just the ones you listed, but everyone else's as well. What, you're using yours? Oh, ok. I'll just dial back that prediction...

You've nailed it. I had a CS lecturer who used exactly that format - but he was a very good lecturer. Others who used blackboard and chalk were, let's be kind, not as compelling. I think the only story is that the path of least resistance has changed.

I did an evening class recently in astronomy. The tutor told us a story of a graduate student who went to South America to work at an observatory there.

She was sent outside to check the weather. She came back in and said there was a huge cloud reaching across the sky.

The guy in charge didn't think that sounded right at all, so he went out to check himself.

It was the Milky Way. And the other astronomer had never seen it.

You're right, you know. Though I still think that "DRM-free music comes to ipod, which is the device everyone has - slashdot officially wins" would be a good headline.

Yep, I hear you and you're right - I'd decided that that's why it got about two slides in the presentation. (That and "we gave in on variable pricing but we get to stop doing this thing we've been foisting on you..." isn't something you can spin out for very long before people get wise.) Frankly, I was surprised even to see DRM mentioned on the apple front page. So I get why it isn't bigger news in the maintstream - but I expected to see slashdotters dancing in the streets.

Quite frankly none of it excited me this round.

I can't believe that the removal from DRM from the iTunes music store isn't bigger news. I think it's huge news. This is the single biggest remaining reason why people are nervous about moving to downloaded music, and it's gone. I'm delighted.