5.3 Merge window, part 1

Posted Jul 15, 2019 15:10 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: 5.3 Merge window, part 1 by imMute
Parent article: 5.3 Merge window, part 1

Note, too, that a variable length address space limited to N bits of address can be mapped into a fixed size address space of size N+1 bits. You add a prefix bit which is 1 if the next N bits are the full address, or 0 otherwise, and do this recursively. You can then unmap by counting leading 0s to retrieve the address size, strip the next 1 bit, and the remainder is the address.

In other words, unless your variable length address is greater than 127 bits in maximum size, it can be entirely mapped into IPv6.