IP address count, even Rajnikanth can’t count

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After this week’s switchover to a new protocol called IPv6, there are a whole lot of IP addresses on the Internet.

How many more?

Just one day after the world wide web made a permanent and forever change on Wednesday, yesterday night some TV  reported the Internet now has 340 trillion trillion trillion unique addresses. That’s 340 undecillion.

We knew the switch from IPv4 to IPv6 would make a bunch of new addresses available. But this is a growth of 79 octillion (billion billion billion)(I have flicked these count names straight from the TV and still counting the no of zero’s it might have).

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But i have no frames of reference for a number that large, so  i have put it into context for a moment.

340 trillion trillion trillion is:

  • More than the number of stars in the universe, according to some estimates.
  • More than the number of cells in the human body.
  • More than the number of gallons of water on Earth.
  • This can be the topic for next episode of Sathyameva jayate.
  • Anna Hazare and Team may protest in the increase in no of IP addresses.
  • Kapil Sibal planning send notice to WWW to pay a bit to Soniaji for every Unique IP address in India.
  • Now, N Srinivasan wants to be head of WWW.
  • Of course, even Rajnikanth can’t count this in a sec.

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