On Oct 3, 2012, at 12:22 PM, Izaac <iz...@setec.org> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 03, 2012 at 06:52:57PM +0200, Seth Mos wrote: >> "Pick a number between this and that." It's the 80's and you can >> still count the computers in the world. :) > > And yet, almost concurrently, IEEE 802 went with forty-eight bits. Go > figure. I'm pretty sure the explanation you're looking for is: It was > with the word size of the most popular minis and micros at the time. > IEEE 802 was expected to provide unique numbers for all computers ever built.
Internet was expected to provide unique numbers for all computers actively on the network. Obviously, over time, the latter would be a declining percentage of the former since the former is increasing and never decrements while the latter could (theoretically) have a growth rate on either side of zero and certainly has some decrements even if the increments exceed the decrements. Owen
