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I was once watching a slideshow about the new IPv6, and it mentioned that it is large enough for every grain of sand on earth to be IP addressable.

Is there any grain of truth behind this? (no pun intended)

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  • 11
    and if it's not addressable, just use NAT for ipv6
    – jokoon
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 9:14
  • 37
    Well, no. Grains of sand don't have any suitable networking hardware. :-)
    – matt_black
    Commented Dec 19, 2012 at 21:29
  • 340 billions ... It is not absolute sure that all of our (so far mostly unknown) Milky Way exoplanets are covered with this ... But heck - we might go for 256 bits address space in IPv7 ...
    – user10893
    Commented Dec 30, 2012 at 23:55
  • @matt_black, yet ;)
    – galdikas
    Commented Jul 28, 2014 at 9:08
  • @KjellArneRekaa Actually IPv7 addresses are only 64 bits.
    – kasperd
    Commented Jul 31, 2015 at 17:47

1 Answer 1

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Estimating the number of grains of sand on Earth is difficult. This source suggests 7.5x1018 grains (7.5 quintillion), but only includes beaches (deserts, under-sea sand and other sources not included.) This source suggests 1020 to 1024 grains (up to septillion grains of sand).

The number of addresses IPv6 could possibly address is 2128 (excluding reserved addresses), or about 3.4x1038 (340 decillion). Even if you remove the reserved addresses you're still left with far more IPs than grains.

In fact, assuming the most number of grains of sand - around 1024 - 294 femtopercent (yes, femto, 10^-15) would be used if every grain were allocated an IP. You could allocate 340 billion planets with the same number of grains of sand before you even came close to filling up the address space. After all that, you'd still have 2.8x10^35 (280 decillion) addresses free.

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  • 9
    Not until everyone on Earth registers their 5x10^28 addresses each.
    – Thomas O
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 0:26
  • 61
    Or until the nanobots run amok (xkcd.com/865)
    – dan04
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 0:48
  • 12
    Too late: I'm already cybersquatting on 145A:8A72:331A:2807::E822.
    – Robusto
    Commented Jun 12, 2011 at 13:40
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    I'm reminded of a quotation that was attributed to Bill Gates in the 1980s (or 1990s): "640k ought to be enough for anybody."
    – Randolf Richardson
    Commented Jun 13, 2011 at 2:27
  • 7
    @Randolf, see here: skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2863/…
    – Thomas O
    Commented Jun 13, 2011 at 6:33

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