On: Goodbye, IPv4 IANA Starts Allocating Final Address Blocks

[rjsw]

I would argue that Ford (and the other multinationals) have more need of an /8 than any university that is just in a single city.

[hrrsn → rjsw]

A /8 is 16,777,216 addresses.

Ford has 181,000 employees as of 2013 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Motor_Company).

That's very roughly 92 publicly routable IP addresses per employee.

I highly doubt they need that many.

[icefox → hrrsn]

What about 1 per car?

[mikeash → icefox]

In practice, I imagine they'd outsource the internet connectivity bit to cellular carriers (as is the case for OnStar and similar at the moment) and those companies would be the ones to worry about provisioning IP addresses.

[blueskin_ → mikeash]

This, plus the IPs mobile networks use are all heavily NATed anyway.

[hrrsn → blueskin_]

Perfect use case for IPv6 anyway.

[mikeash → rjsw]

I would agree, and say that universities with an entire /8 probably shouldn't have them anymore either. That's a case where it definitely made sense early on, but stopped making sense quite a while ago.

[justincormack → mikeash]

Imperial College had two as the computer science department had its own /8. Probably still does.