On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:57:45 +0900
Randy Bush <[email protected]> wrote:
Ever calculated how many Ethernet nodes you can attach to a
single LAN
with 2^46 unicast addresses?
you mean operationally successfully, or just for marketing glossies?
Theoretically. What I find a bit hard to understand is peoples'
seemingly complete acceptance of the 'gross' amount of ethernet
address
space there is available with 46 bits available for unicast addressing
on a single LAN segment, yet confusion and struggle over the
allocation
of additional IPv6 bits addressing bits for the same purpose - the
operational convenience of having addressing "work out of the box" or
be simpler to understand and easier to work with.
Once I realised that IPv6's fixed sized node addressing model was
similar to Ethernet's, I then started wondering why Ethernet was like
it was - and then found a paper that explains it :
"48-bit Absolute Internet and Ethernet Host Numbers"
http://ethernethistory.typepad.com/papers/HostNumbers.pdf