User:Christopher M Dunn/sandbox

A conceptual analogy to visualize the difference in the sizes of the logical address spaces of IPv4 and IPv6 can be accomplished with an analogy which equates a single grain of sand to one logical IP address. Under the IPv4 scheme of internet addressing space at a given density of 300,000 grains of sand per cubic inch, the number of grains of sand to represent the entire IPv4 address space would yield 99.4 cubic feet of sand, or, approximately enough sand to fill a cube with sides of 4.63 feet.

This analogy does not take the procedure of "sub-netting" into account which would effectively "hide" up to 8,388,606 sub-netted host IP addresses within any given sand granule. With this understanding, Using the same density parameters and omitting need to account for sub-nets, the amount of sand to represent the logical address space of IPv6 would be the approximate quantity of sand necessary to fill 206,207,725 spheres the size of planet Earth.