addressing != processing
While your post is correct, it's off-topic.

Back in 2008 there were tests by AARNet checking that multi-cast was working across the public internet and over oceanic links.

I would love to have a 12v server. UPS is just an individual battery and/or a battery bank.

Here your answer why 128bit addresses are used. You don't hand out address based on need, you give something so large that no one could use it all.

You make it sound like they are doing something they shouldn't. In reality, IPv4 was a proof of concept and anyone was allowed to join the "beta" network. "Here have some IP addresses, free of charge, they're yours until we make the "real" protocol.

IPv4 takes off and now these companies who got these large /8 blocks have no restrictions because that was the contract at the time. We can't just change the contract on them because we don't like it anymore.

"Hey guys, we have a new toy, here's some numbers you can have". 25 years later.. "shiat"

It may have been /., but some site had an interview with the creator of IPv4 and he said it was just a proof-of-concept, but it took off before IPv6 was finalized. Once IPv4 become too popular, IPv6 went to the back-burner for a bit.

Can you do so without changing IP addresses? IP renumber is very expensive for network/server admins and it is a very common thing with merging corp networks.

Sorry, our version of the internet no longer works. Sounds like a great beginning to a class-action suit after many software/consoles/etc break. I'm sure Ipv6 will take off before it becomes much of an issue. Anyway, many network engineers have talked about how ISP level NAT for broadband connections is more expensive and more of a head-ache than just switching to IPv6.

no more than a NAT can be tracked.

The point isn't to have enough IPs for every user, but to have enough IPs such that the chance of collision is low. The other thing you miss is the ability to merge large corp networks. If you have to merge two companies with two datacenters with 100,000 machines each, the chance of a colliding IP address with only 4 bytes is quite large.