Dual stack IPv6 for IPv4 depletion

[list at satchell.net (Stephen Satchell)]

On 07/15/2015 02:23 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> I will point out that nobody has said ?what the F*** were they
> thinking? when they made it possible to use 4GB of RAM instead of
> just 640k, but lots of people have said ?what the F*** were they
> thinking when they limited it to 640k.?

That 640k was the architectural limit imposed on Intel 16-bit 8086 
system implementations, once you allocated fixed space for ROM.  This 
was specific to the "IBM PC".  This has to do with the 20-bit addressing 
used in the 8086.  One could "grow" the address space externally, and 
some computer systems (not "IBM PC compatible") did so.

Again, the 4-GB RAM limits is an architectural limit of the hardware; 
there is no "speed-of-light" limit in the amount of DRAM one can have in 
a system.

Let's review the bidding on Internet Protocol, shall we?

APRANET NCP (1970) -- 8-bit host
Version 0 -- can't figure out the limit, if any; 4-bit "chunks"
Version 1 -- 16-bit net/host address
Version 2 -- variable! in octet increments
Version 3 -- (not available)
Version 4-78jun -- variable! in octet increments
Version 4-78sep -- 32 bit net/host address, Class A (8-bit net)
Version 5 -- (experimental circuit-switch protocol)
Version 6 -- 128-bit