[LINK] RFID enabled Mobile Phone for Health Monitoring

Karl Auer kauer at biplane.com.au
Thu May 17 21:51:48 AEST 2007


On Thu, 2007-05-17 at 20:16 +1000, Eleanor Lister wrote:
> i am told that IPv6 (?)  the dotted hex thing, would have enough codes
> to give one for every grain of sand on earth ... is this true?

Actually it's one - more than one, in fact - for every hydrogen atom in
the Universe. But because of the *astoundingly* wasteful allocation
policies (do we never learn?) in place at the moment, we will be lucky
if it lasts 15 years.[1] Most subnets will be, by today's standards,
mostly empty.[2]

> and
> if every single RFID has one, we have to ask questions like "what is
> privacy?  how is it preserved?  is it important?".

It doesn't have anything to do with the addressing. Really not.

> i think this is a change on the order of discovering fire, or inventing
> the wheel ... it promises to change the world dramatically.

What does - RFID or a different addressing scheme? If the latter, yes,
it will - but not the way you think.

Regards, K.

[1] The US Government wanted a /8 reserved for itself. A /8! I believe
it has since been taken aside and had things explained to it in more
detail... but some telcos have apparently already secured (I think) /19
address spaces. That's hearsay though.

[2] 48 bits of prefix, 16 bits of subnet (that's 65536 subnets), each
subnet with 64 bits of address space. Each *subnet* is 4 billion times
larger than the *entire IPv4 address space*. Stupid, stupid, stupid,
stupid. Perhaps wiser heads will prevail, but they'd better prevail
soon...

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)




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