Re: IPv6 end user addressing

[Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter () gmail com>]

On 2011-08-11 12:45, james machado wrote:

> what is the life expectancy of IPv6?  It won't live forever and we
> can't reasonably expect it too.  I understand we don't want run out of
> addresses in the next 10-40 years but what about 100? 200? 300?
>
> We will run out and our decedents will go through re-numbering again.
> The question becomes what is the life expectancy of IPv6 and does the
> allocation plan make a reasonable attempt to run out of addresses
> around the end of the expected life of IPv6.

Well, we know that the human population will stabilise somewhere below
ten billion by around 2050. The current unicast space provides for about
15 trillion /48s. Let's assume that the RIRs and ISPs retain their current
level of engineering common sense - i.e. the address space will begin to be
really full when there are about 25% of those /48s being routed... that makes
3.75 trillion /48s routed for ten billion people, or 375 /48s per man, woman
and child. (Or about 25 million /64s if you prefer.)

At that point, IANA would have to release unicast space other than 2000::/3
and we could start again with a new allocation policy.

I am *really* not worried about this. Other stuff, such as BGP4, will break
irrevocably long before this.

   Brian