> IPv6 has several advantages, including a much larger address space. IPv4 had only 2^32 addresses, less than one per person on earth. IPv6 has 2^128 addresses, an immensely larger number which is not expected ever to be exhausted. Estimates are that this is enough to assign 100 IPv6 addresses to every atom on earth.
Yeah, so that's overestimating the number of IPv6 addresses by quite a couple of orders of magnitude. This website estimates the number of atoms at 10^49 to 10^50, whereas 2^128 is in the order of 3 * 10^38. https://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/inquiring/questions/atoms.h... Perhaps the writer was thinking of grains of sand instead of atoms? I'm not sure how many sand we have, but it's probably more in the 2^128 ballpark.
Yeah, so that's overestimating the number of IPv6 addresses by quite a couple of orders of magnitude. This website estimates the number of atoms at 10^49 to 10^50, whereas 2^128 is in the order of 3 * 10^38. https://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/inquiring/questions/atoms.h... Perhaps the writer was thinking of grains of sand instead of atoms? I'm not sure how many sand we have, but it's probably more in the 2^128 ballpark.