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July 15, 2006

Confused Americans for Truth - The Times Online Gets Confused About IPv6

by Ferdinand T Cat

Okay, so we all make mistakes, but this one is so easy to spot you have to wonder. The Times Online has a story about the new Internet IPv6 protocol. In that story they explain that in the current IPv4 protocolthe original protocol an Internet address is described by a "16-bit" number, which means you have "2 to the 32" possible addresses.

Obviously, if you have 2^32 addresses, there are 32 bits.

The Times goes on to explain that the new protocol uses "32-bit" addressing, which means "340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion" possible addresses. This, of course, is obviously wrong, because IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses, so IPv6 has to be bigger. In fact, it uses 128-bit addressing, and you can read all about it here.

I know that the news happens very fast these days, and journalists are under a lot of pressure to get a story out before anybody else, but a Google search to check your facts only takes a couple of minutes.

I think they should seriously consider replacing their current editorial staff with cats.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat


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I (a network engineer) saw that story and just laughed, both because they got the numbers wrong, and because even if the numbers were right, virtually no one would have understood what the heck they were talking about.

Me, I'm just looking forward to the day when every remaining hair on my head has its own IP address.


Posted by: Russ at July 16, 2006 10:53 PM

HTML is not allowed in comments; however, if you put in a raw URL (http://www.somewhere.com/page.html) it will automatically be converted to a link.. Also, it is likely your comment will not appear unless you refresh the page manually after posting it.

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