Merit Network
Can't find what you're looking for? Search the Mail Archives.
  About Merit   Services   Network   Resources & Support   Network Research   News   Events   Home

Discussion Communities: Merit Network Email List Archives

North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: ISP customer assignments

  • From: David Andersen
  • Date: Mon Oct 05 20:00:37 2009

On Oct 5, 2009, at 7:50 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
I'm perplexed. At what size address would people stop worrying about
the "finite" address space? 256 bits? 1024 bits?

I just don't get it. It's not like people get stressed out about running
out of name space in English which is probably more "finite" than ipv6.
Unless you're trying to find a nice, catchy, short domain name. ;-)

But seriously: Many people don't seem to have good intuition about really big numbers. Say, on the order of 2^128. The same thing comes up in discussions about hash collisions in, e.g., content based naming with a 160-bit namespace. I think it's because the numbers are so astronomically big, that without some amount of math and having thought about it with paper and pencil, people automatically scale the #s into terms they can think of as "really big" (like, # of people on earth). So when they think about the 128-bit namespace, they apply intuition that works for a 35-bit namespace...

-Dave





Discussion Communities


About Merit | Services | Network | Resources & Support | Network Research
News | Events | Contact | Site Map | Merit Network Home


Merit Network, Inc.