Question about IPAM tools for v6

[Tim Chown]

On 3 Feb 2014, at 11:32, Sam Wilson <Sam.Wilson at ed.ac.uk> wrote:

> 
> On 3 Feb 2014, at 11:17, Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:
> 
>> On 03/02/2014 11:11, Sam Wilson wrote:
>>> Let me de-lurk and make the obvious point that using standard Ethernet
>>> addressing would limit the number of nodes on a single link to 2^47, and
>>> that would require every unicast address assigned to every possible
>>> vendor.  Using just the Locally Administered addresses would limit you
>>> to 2^46.
>> 
>> it bothers me that I can't find any switch with 2^46 ports.
>> 
>> Damned vendors.
> 
> 
> The back of my envelope says that with my vendor of choice and a 4-deep tree (7-hop old-style STP limit) of 384-port switches I can't get more than about 2^34 edge ports.  Very disappointing.  That would need approximately 57 million routers, though, and 170 GW of electrical power, not counting the cooling requirements.  

That's a lot of hamsters.

Tim