Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

AFAIK, it's not strictly true that unicast addresses are required to use a /64 network identifier.

It's common, almost necessary even, for environments with dynamic clients to use /64 subnets (precisely so that SLAAC works), but in a static environment it's perfectly fine to use prefixes larger than /64 (e.g. delegate a /80 to each individual host in a datacenter, for virtualization applications etc).

Hence, I'm wondering what the spec is you mention that is broken?




RFC 4291 section 2.5.1

and to your point, yeah you can step outside the spec and things can work in controlled environments, but "there be dragons" when your dealing with interoperability on a large scale (in this case Android expecting /64s per the RFC)




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: