This one’s for you, Chris.

I’ve read countless articles, comments, posts about IPv6 and ‘that there are x IPv6 addresses for every human/square meter/grain of sand… on earth’. Okay, but let’s go hypothetical now, make some assumptions, and try to predict when the IPv6 address pool will be depleted. It’s just for fun, don’t expect any educational value in this article.

I’m going to use powers of ten to keep it somewhat imaginable. The total number of possible combinations with 128 bits is 3.40*10^38.  However, some ranges are unusable for internet routable traffic, and reserved by IETF:

  • FE80::/10 – Link local addresses.
  • FC00::/7 – Unique local packets, somewhat resembling RFC 1918 addresses for IPv4.
  • FF00::/8 – Multicast addresses.
  • 2002::/16 – 6to4 addresses, which are more of a transition mechanism and not really host addresses.

Currently, only the 2000::/3 range is global unicast, but other ranges can be assigned so in the future. The currently assigned range alone gives 4.25*10^37 addresses. For simplicity, I’m going to assume that eventually the entire address range will be used, except 2002::/16 and the entire F000::/4 block. That should cover all current and future reserved assignments. That’s still 3.19*10^38 addresses.

It should be clear by now we will run out of useable MAC addresses much sooner than IPv6 addresses, but let’s leave that out of the equation here. Let’s continue with our 39-digit number. But, even if we assume that in the near future every mobile device has an IP address, and we assume that the number of mobile devices doubles (e.g. one smartphone, one tablet), then we have about 10 billion devices, according to Wikipedia. That’s 10^10, which is nothing next to 10^38. Even multiplying that number by 1000, to cover all servers, point-to-point links, multiple home computers, household devices with an IP (refrigerators, ovens, photo frames, you name it), the total number of cars,… It will ‘only’ count up to 10^13, which doesn’t even scratch the surface of the entire available address pool.

The answer doesn’t lie in counting the number of devices that could possibly have an IP address. But, so far, I have been assuming perfectly filled subnets, no wasted addresses. That’s certainly not going to happen in IPv6: the EUI-64 mechanism for stateless autoconfiguration of IPv6 addresses requires a subnet to have 64 bits. This means most, if not all subnets (except point-to-point links), will have a size of /64 in the future. Highly inefficient for the conservation of addresses. Using the values I assumed earlier, that gives me 1.73*10^19 subnets. So from a 39-digit number, we now have a more realistic 20-digit number.
Let’s try to deplete that by, for example, giving one /56 per house (recommended, but that’s not likely to happen, as described in detail already by network instructor Chris Welsh), and one /48 per company. I haven’t found any definitive numbers, but I think it’s a conservative assumption that there are about 3 people on average sharing one home in the world, with fewer in the Western world (about 2.5 on average) and more in other parts of the world. As far as companies go, I’ve only found one quote saying there were 56 million companies worldwide in 2004, without anything to back it up, but it’s the best I have.

Assuming 60 million companies in 2012 with a /48, and 7.2 billion people, with an average of three per household, for a total of 2.4 billion households with a /56, I can calculate:

  • A /56 is 8 bits, 256 subnets times 2.4 billion makes 614.4 billion.
  • A /48 is 16 bits, 65536 subnets times 60 million makes 3.93*10^12
  • Together, that’s 4.55*10^12 subnets used.

That still doesn’t touch the 10^19 value. However, we now have a number that represents the used number of subnets versus the whole population (and assuming the whole world has access to IPv6 technology and needs it, but hey, we’re making assumptions for the future, and I’m hoping the best for humanity). Dividing our number of used subnets by the population, we get roughly 632 of /64 subnets used per human on this planet.
1.73*10^19 total subnets, divided by 632 subnets per human, gives 27,37*10^15 humans on the planet before the subnets are depleted. That’s 27 million billion. At this point, I was going to take a chart about human population growth, but none of them make predictions past 20 billion.

Conclusion: unless we reach for the stars and spread our IPv6 address space over the entire galaxy (even our solar system wouldn’t do), or finally perfect nanotechnology and decide to give each nanobot his own IPv6 address, we will not run out of IPv6 addresses. Even with large error margins, there are simply too many addresses and too few things to give it to. ISPs, hand out those /56 already!

Advertisement