12 Nov
2024
12 Nov
'24
21:28
On 11/12/24 15:24, Lew Wolfgang wrote:
Exactly. Why carry around all those extra host bits if they'll never be used. 24 makes sense to include MAC addresses, maybe round up to 32 in an abundance of caution. But 64? Wouldn't 4.3 billion host address be sufficient with /32?
A MAC address is 48 bits, so it has to be at least that big, as was the case with Netware. As I mentioned, 64 was likely selected as it cut the address in half. Also, with modern networks, moving bits around is trivial. One other aspect is the sparely populated, huge address space makes it extremely difficult to find something to attack, unlike with IPv4, where most addresses are occupied.