[ih] The Postel Principle

[Leo Vegoda via Internet-history]

On Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 11:28 AM Brian E Carpenter via
Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

[...]

> So here's the history question. In IPv4-land, people learned to be very
> conservative about addresses since, after all, there were only 4 billion
> of them, not even half an address per human. Why don't people adapt to
> the fact that IPv6 provides, for example, 15 trillion /48 prefixes
> and a number I can't be bothered to work out of /64 prefixes? Where's
> the human adaptability gone that was so apparent when the Internet was young?

Extremely conservative addressing plans are not universal. There are
plenty of providers whose default assignments are at least comfortable
and often generous.

My guess for the reason that some providers treat IPv6 addresses as
scarce is simply that they have been able to charge extra for static
IPv4 addresses, multiple IPv4 addresses etc... and they don't want
their pricing to diverge too much between IPv4 and IPv6 as it takes
extra effort to explain why.

Regards,

Leo Vegoda
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