mildly mathematical: sometimes basic arithmetic matters.

first, another disaster quietly averted ..

-- -- ✂ -- --

.. IPv4, which is how we’ve been doing business — a 32-bit address consisting of four octets separated by decimal points, e.g. 12.34.56.78 — only allows a total of 2³² addresses (just under 4.3 billion). Tally up all the people in the world with single or shared Internet equipment that needs at least one public IP address, as well as all the enterprise-level (private, government) systems in need of the same (every website, for instance), and you can see where the 4.3 billion ceiling was bound to be a problem.

Enter IPv6, which uses 128-bit addresses, allowing up to 2¹²⁸ addresses (a number with too many zeroes to write out, but about 3.4 x 10³⁸) — the leap in addressing possibilities from IPv4 to IPv6 is literally exponential.

~ from "IPv6 Day: Only the Biggest Change to the Internet Since Its Inception" (Time magazine)

-- -- ✂ -- --

.. and second, when clichés are made quantitative:

-- -- ✂ -- --

Driving the point home, he added, "Think about this: even if you're one in a million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you."

~ from "High school teacher tells graduating students: you’re not special" (NY Daily News)

-- -- ✂ -- --