7 Replies to “Its the End Times”

  1. I know this is likely quite different in technical terms, but ever since the enormous “Y2K / the world is going to end unless we re-write every program to keep them all functioning after Dec. 31, 1999!!! The sky is falling!!! Pay us millions to fix this crisis!!! Y2K!!!” scam, I no longer pay the slightest attention to any of this ultra-high tech ‘crisis du jour’.

  2. I’ve got my static IP. All y’all other people can starve for data in the information superhighway off-ramps.

  3. Canadian Friend.
    Network addresses are how computers talk to each other and know how to find each other. They’re called IP Addresses. IPv4 is made up of four numbers from 0-255 separated by a dot.
    i.e. 192.168.100.123
    So, you can see that the maximum number of IP addresses is 2^(8*4) or 2^32 or 4,294,967,296. That’s not exactly accurate due to the way the internet works and various ‘fixes’: CIDR, NAT, gateways, broadcast addresses and private or non-routing blocks but that doesn’t matter. Every ‘directly’ connected device on the planet has an IP address.
    The N.American Names and Number registry (ARIN) has run out of unassigned IPv4 addresses.
    A newer not-so-simple solution is known as IPv6. It increases the pool of available IP addresses to 3.4 * 10^38. That’s a big number, but in order to use it, you have to change how your computer talks to other computers. Instead of looking up http://www.google.ca and getting decimal 65.87.229.223, you get 2607:f8b0:400f:803::2003 which is in hex.
    It goes beyond this reply, but it isn’t quite as simple as updating your DNS zones with an IPv6 address.

  4. Ok, so why is the upper limit set at 255? Double that and you accommodate twice the addresses, no?
    But it’s Greek to me. Give me a wrench or a hammer.

  5. Base 2, Snagglepuss. Computers have this thing with on or off. 0-255 = 256 numbers = 2^8.
    And before you say it, “Okay, 2^9 then.” remember, 2^(8*4)=2^32 and look up what 32 bit address space means and what a long int is.
    But that isn’t the real answer. The answer is that in the 70’s they didn’t think the internet would catch on at a consumer level so they thought 4 billion addresses would be enough.
    Suffice to say, changing to a larger bit address would be as much a challenge as the 128 bit IPv6.

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