A while back I ran across a post where someone commented that the designers of IPv4 had made a mistake only using 32 bit addresses. Yes, it would have saved us hassle if they’d kept the variable-length addresses from the IPv3 draft, but I think they actually made a reasonable decision given what the technology world was like at the time, and I wrote an article to talk about that.

https://lpar.ath0.com/posts/2026/01/ipv4-history/ #ComputingHistory #InternetHistory