IPv6 Prefix Allocation

Discussions center on IPv6 address space allocations, particularly ISPs handing out /64 prefixes to customers, debates on their size relative to needs, and comparisons to IPv4 private ranges like RFC1918.

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Keywords

e.g US OK AWS DARPA CIDR RFC1918 NAT IMO VPS addresses 64 ipv6 address space 48 space address 127 isps ipv4

Sample Comments

perryizgr8 Sep 21, 2021 View on HN

They will probably give you an entire /64 subnet. You can use 2^64 devices. It will be fine :)

RockRobotRock Feb 9, 2024 View on HN

Why do we need more RFC1918 addresses? What's wrong with 10.0.0.0/8?

jrockway Dec 17, 2019 View on HN

/64 is a lot of addresses. That's 2^32 internets.

bell-cot Jun 24, 2023 View on HN

How about 224.0.0.0/4? There are vastly more addresses going to waste up there...

sgt Dec 12, 2021 View on HN

Oh boy, we're gonna need more than 4,294,967,296 IP addresses!

unethical_ban Oct 21, 2024 View on HN

You're technically correct, but ISPs best practice is to hand out a /64.

toast0 Jul 29, 2022 View on HN

You can get /24's (256 addresses), you don't need to get a /22. Anything with a longer prefix is not generally allocated by regional internet registries, and won't usually be accepted over BGP.

gnabgib Feb 7, 2024 View on HN

Did you mean /24? As low as /16 is valid, but /8 includes plenty of public addresses.

jabart May 13, 2024 View on HN

On the ISP side, you get a ton of space. As a consumer on residential broadband, you get a limited amount of space. I have a /40 and assign down to a /127 for Point to Point links in a datacenter. IPv6 is still an older standard and a lot of assumptions were built in about a /64 being the smallest subnet. Some routers didn't support a /127 for PtP until recently even though it was an RFC in 2010. I think even NAT66 was discouraged until everyone realized you cann't

mfontani Feb 21, 2025 View on HN

Nice, limits for ipv6 are for a /64 and there's quite a lot of those in a /48...