[justcool393]

> what's not to love about it

hexadecimal, unironically. the url of

http://[2002:914b1:::1]

is one of my major sticking points for IPv6. i'd rather just have it be 16 octets or even 8 decimal quartets where each thing is required.

http://0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.192.168.1.1:14246

would've at least looked a bit better than it is. would've been super easy too. imagine the convo:

"what's google's DNS IP in IPvX?"

"oh it's just 8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8"

[BizarroLand]

So, in my IPv4.1 suggestion, every address you currently know would work perfectly fine.

But then so would AE1.224.78.BC2

Sure, a little harder to remember maybe, but adding nearly a billion times as many IP addresses would alleviate the strain on the internet, be backwards compatible with IPv4 (but not forwards compatible, so most interior/home networks would use either a NAT or have a software ipv4-4.1 bridge software)

It would also be much more similar to IPv6 which would ease transition to full IPv6 if the human race survives long enough to ever make the jump. IPv6 is just more hexadecimal after all.

[Dagger2]

Wait, you wanted to extend the text representation of v4 addresses? That's not a thing that exists in the protocol. The addresses are in binary in the packet format and in all data structures, so any extension of the character set in the text representation has to be implemented by increasing the bit length of the addresses.

I don't know why you think this is "inherently backwards compatible" yet think v6 isn't. It's just as backwards-compatible as v6 is.

[LinuxBender]

"oh it's just 8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8.8"

I think what you are saying is that it should be turned into a jingle so everyone can dial it fast. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m6qutSER9Q [video][11s]

[p1mrx]

Decimal addresses are an artifact from the time before CIDR, when subnets were always /8, /16, or /24. IPv4 subnet math now requires obscure binary/decimal conversion. Hexadecimal fixes that problem.