[divbzero]

What we could do is increase the number of IP addresses available. Just imagine if we enlarged the IP address space from 32 bits to 128 bits: Every device on the Internet could have a unique IP address!

[fulafel]

That sounds apocalyptic. What if street addresses were unambiguous? Think of the security implications. Anyone could just walk into your house. Much better to just have "local street 10 b" etc.

[7bit]

You could install a door. Then again, who am I telling people what to do.

[Yaggo]

Interesting idea! But I think such upgrade would take years, if not decades, to get widely adopted.

[showmexyz]

Or maybe a century.

[drnick1]

The issue is that we DO NOT want every device to have a publicly routable IP address. It does make sense for some machines, but you probably don't want your your Internet-of-Shit devices to have public IPs. Of course you can firewall the devices, but you are always one misconfiguration or bug away from exposing devices that should not be exposed, when a local network is a more natural solution for what is supposed to remain local in the first place.

[7bit]

- NAT is not a firewall. A firewall is a firewall. - NAT is not better than a firewall. - NAT does not replace a firewall.

[teo_zero]

And we could represent the addresses with hex numbers separated by : instead of decimal numbers separated by .

[layer8]

That’d be kinda inconvenient with respect to the port number syntax in URLs, though.

[pcarroll]

We did. It's called IPv6. It's 20 years old and still not usable universally. At the high end, like enterprise or telcos, it's fantastic. But at the grass roots level of residential and small businesses, it's still a nightmare.

[amwet]

I think that was the joke