The web nonetheless runs on two addressing methods that do not truly get alongside: IPv4 is the only nearly everybody nonetheless has to grasp, with its acquainted four-number addresses, and it ran out of to be had addresses handy out years in the past. IPv6 is the legit successor, first standardized in 1998 and up to date since, and in spite of just about 3 a long time of deployment paintings, it is extensively utilized in some puts and nonetheless absent or solely partly applied in lots of others. That leaves the web caught in a messy midway area: IPv4-only in some puts, IPv6-first in others, and dual-stack throughout all of the center. And that is the reason precisely the location no person sought after from a substitute to IPv4.
Each and every so continuously, although, somebody drops an offer claiming to have solved it. It is most often located as a 3rd approach that fixes addressing with out the migration ache, continuously given a assured title and introduced along lofty claims. Maximum of the ones cross nowhere, even though a couple of transform notorious. China’s so-called IPv9, which was once lengthy, sophisticated, and not identified through someone who in fact governs the web, is an instance of this, and it nonetheless controlled to generate years of puzzled headlines. In April 2026, a brand new one grew to become up referred to as IPv8, and it adopted a surprisingly acquainted arc: a unmarried record, formatted like an legit same old, promising to mend the web’s toughest issues abruptly.
IPv8 is an actual report sitting on an actual IETF server, however it isn’t a regular; there is not any working-group adoption, and there is not any IETF endorsement of any type. It is a person Web-Draft, which is set as on the subject of an open add as the criteria global will get, and someone can post one. The person in the back of it, Jamie Thain, has overtly admitted he used AI chatbots to assist write it. And in spite of all of that, IPv8 drew a 100-plus remark pile-on on Hacker Information, an interview in The Sign in, and moderately an outstanding quantity of protection around the web as an entire. Sadly, it additionally carried sufficient surface-level legitimacy that the ones with just a informal passion in networking may simply mistake it for one thing some distance additional alongside than it was once.
IPv8 is not a “hoax,” however Thain is not an nameless troll lobbing a comic story over the fence, both. He is a long-time IT entrepreneur who seems to be sincerely seeking to construct the article, crowdfunding and all. Whilst the paperwork glance legit, engineers have stated that it is unworkable.
What IPv8 in fact proposes
Zone servers, authentication, and extra
Strip away the formatting and the core concept is understated sufficient to provide an explanation for in a sentence. Thain’s IPv8 makes use of 64-bit addresses written as 8 decimal numbers, r.r.r.r.n.n.n.n, the place the primary 4 numbers are a routing prefix and the final 4 are a bunch handle with, within the draft’s personal phrases, “similar semantics to IPv4.” Thain frames it as one thing that may be likened to a space code bolted onto the entrance of a typical IPv4 handle. The routing prefix is derived from an Independent Device Quantity, the identifier that each community operator already makes use of to announce its routes to the remainder of the web.
The most important outcome of that proposal is that each ASN holder would get its personal complete IPv4-sized handle house, more or less 4.3 billion host addresses, all to itself. That might, in principle, take away the address-pressure argument for carrier-grade NAT, the address-sharing hack ISPs lean on as a result of IPv4 ran dry. And the draft makes a far larger declare on best of that: “IPv4 is a correct subset of IPv8.” An IPv8 handle with a routing prefix of 0.0.0.0 merely is an IPv4 handle, which is how Thain arrives at his boldest declare, that IPv8 is “100% backward appropriate” and may also be rolled out as a tool replace with out a flag day and not one of the dual-stack distress he blames for IPv6’s failure.
It does not forestall there, as Thain’s IPv8 bundles in an entire parallel suite of control protocols, maximum of them named through stapling an “8” onto one thing that already exists. There may be BGP8, OSPF8, and IS-IS8 for routing, DHCP8 for handle project, DNS8 for names, NTP8 for time, WHOIS8 for possession lookups, ICMPv8, ARP8, plus a couple of fully new ones like XLATE8 for translation and Route8 for, smartly, routing. By means of the creator’s personal depend, it cascades into round ten coordinated specs.
Maintaining all of that in combination is the “Zone Server,” and it is the maximum bold piece of the entire design. The draft describes it as a paired energetic/energetic platform that bundles DHCP8, DNS8, NTP8, an OAuth8 caching layer, WHOIS8 validation, access-control enforcement, logging, and handle translation right into a unmarried control aircraft for the community. Safety is baked without delay into the 3rd layer of the stack: each manageable component must be licensed with OAuth2 JWT tokens pulled from an area cache, site visitors between methods is gated through access-control regulations, and site visitors leaving the community will get validated in opposition to DNS8 and WHOIS8 lookups sooner than it is allowed out.
There may be even a routing metric referred to as the Value Issue, and a rule that no prefix extra explicit than a /16 may also be injected throughout community limitations, which Thain argues would cap the worldwide routing desk at more or less 175,000 entries as a substitute of letting it balloon the way in which lately’s desk has. One access in line with ASN, in concept, makes it a structurally bounded desk slightly than one who grows without end.
The pitch necessarily quantities to announcing that IPv6 misplaced as an implementation; it is technically high quality, however no longer value the associated fee and energy of migrating to. That is why IPv8 tries to resolve addressing, routing-table expansion, community control, and safety as a unmarried package deal you’ll deploy at the {hardware} you already personal. It is a slightly daring imaginative and prescient, however the second you have a look at how it might in fact transfer packets, it begins coming aside.
Networking engineers say the core promise contradicts itself
It cannot be backward appropriate
An important declare within the draft may be the one who raised essentially the most eyebrows: “100% backward appropriate.” The issue is that IPv8 units the IP model box to eight and makes use of 64-bit supply and vacation spot addresses as a substitute of IPv4’s 32-bit ones, which makes for an extended header. Present IPv4 routers, switches, and firewalls are constructed to parse model 4, so a local packet stamped model 8 is not one thing they are able to simply transparently go alongside, even though the draft tries to direction round this. It says IPv8-capable units must ship odd IPv4 packets to IPv4-only neighbors, lean on an IPv4 “compatibility mode,” and translate at community limitations thru a mechanism it calls XLATE8. Thain put it slightly bluntly himself in a LinkedIn remark: “ipv8 sends ipv4 and bury it within the datagram.”
That is a workable transition, however it is translation and encapsulation, no longer local backward compatibility, and it is onerous to name it “100% backward appropriate” beneath the ones stipulations. A unbroken rollout relying on capacity detection, boundary translation, and upgraded edge units can not truly declare that “no current software, utility, or community calls for amendment.” Cloud community architect and Microsoft MVP Simon Painter additionally identified that a large number of networking tools parses packets in a hardcoded method. The forwarding common sense is burned into the chip, and “you’ll’t send a firmware replace that teaches a fixed-function pipeline to parse an extended header.” K, so entire backwards compatibility is out, however what concerning the three-layer design?
Neatly, it seems that attaching OAuth wasn’t precisely common, both. The primary factor was once reasonably glaring: if you wish to have a token to make a request, how do you’re making a request to get the token within the first position? No longer solely that, however hanging authentication that deep within the stack additionally breaks the layering the web is constructed on. Tying the routing prefix to an ASN, in the meantime, quietly breaks multihoming, the extraordinarily not unusual observe of a community achieving the web thru multiple supplier, which the present device handles exactly as a result of addresses are not welded to a unmarried self sufficient device. The proposed Zone Server will not be a literal unmarried field, for the reason that draft pairs it energetic/energetic, however it nonetheless concentrates DNS, DHCP, time, authentication, logging, and translation into one tightly coupled management aircraft.
Then there is the title itself, which a number of other people identified was once by no means Thain’s to take. In IANA’s legit registry of IP model numbers, price 8 is already indexed as Reserved (Historical), pointing again thru RFC 1621 to an early-Nineties proposal referred to as Pip. “IPv8” may be the long-standing title of an unrelated peer-to-peer overlay networking library from the Tribler challenge at Delft College, which has existed for smartly over a decade and has not anything to do with changing the web layer. Selecting an already-occupied, somewhat cursed model quantity for a brand-new protocol comes throughout as though it is being proposed through somebody who does not know the distance.
I will be truthful; none of this implies each concept within the draft is nugatory. Actually, there have been some critics of the draft who in fact praised some portions of it. However the contradictions and problematic proposals land proper within the heart of the full pitch, and it makes any just right recommendation appear to be an unintended one slightly than one that is been smartly idea out.
Jamie Thain is not an nameless no person
This took a large number of digging
Many of us have seen this debacle as a man with an excessive amount of unfastened time and a subscription to ChatGPT, however that is in fact an unfair studying of the location. Jamie Thain, who additionally is going through James, seems to be a reasonably seasoned era determine with a monitor file that runs thru each Bermuda and Canada. He submitted the draft proposal with a location in Bermuda, beneath the corporate title of “One Restricted.” As smartly, from what I may in finding, he seems to be the similar Jamie Thain who was once named as leader technical officer of Bluewave Bermuda, a fixed-wireless ISP, when it introduced in 2017, although no unmarried supply without delay bridges that function to his present ventures, so it is a sturdy chance slightly than a walk in the park.
Thain’s contemporary historical past is more uncomplicated to trace: he and his trade spouse Jack Benaim went during the DMZ startup accelerator at Toronto Metropolitan College. There, they co-founded InnoFund, a Bermuda startup incubator that introduced in past due 2021. Thain was once additionally leader era officer of FanDemand, a Toronto corporate, and was once offered in that function on a Bermuda executive 5G advisory panel in 2020. Lately he is the founder and CTO of Quadlii, a Canadian startup pitching AI-driven “logic-first, composable” tool infrastructure. From the whole lot I will in finding, that is somebody who is been development and working era corporations throughout two nations for years, with a path stretching again to a minimum of the mid-2010s.
Sadly, what he isn’t, although, is a network-standards particular person. IPv8 is his first-ever Web-Draft. His IETF profile displays no prior drafts and no RFCs, along no monitor file within the criteria procedure in any respect. That does not make him clueless, however as we’re going to get to, it is onerous to determine the place the road is between AI-assisted Thain and simply, smartly, Thain. In a single reaction on LinkedIn, he seemed to reason why fluently about genuine networking ideas, BGP, anycast, 802.1x, ASICs, the entire whilst cheerfully calling himself “an EIGRP bigot.” Charitably, you’ll want to say that he is somebody with hands-on enjoy and an entrepreneur with self-taught networking intensity. Alternatively, he is additionally somebody who turns out to have by no means been during the sluggish, consensus-driven equipment that turns an concept into an web same old.
His on-line presence muddies issues additional, which is a part of what makes all of this so tricky to concretely pin on him. There are two LinkedIn accounts. One belongs to a credentialed “James Thain” in Ontario, with an actual picture, genuine connections, and his present Quadlii function. The opposite is a near-empty “Jamie Thain” indexed in Hamilton, Bermuda, with a generic avatar, a handful of connections, and rarely any process, and it is that sparse Bermuda-presenting account the IPv8 writing is bylined to. The threads that tie the Bermuda-based creator again to the real particular person are a large number of, and we’re going to discuss with the credentialed account as “Number one” and the near-empty account as “Secondary” for ease of working out.
- Number one revealed a put up with a hyperlink to the bylined article through Secondary.
- Number one additionally spoke back to somebody commenting at the hyperlink to the object through Secondary as though it had been his personal advent.
- Secondary, a couple of months in the past, stated “This is the reason we’re development Quadlii AI” originally of a put up.
As smartly, his personal crowdfunding web page offers us further clues: The Sign in showed the GoFundMe for IPv8 is his, and it lists him in Oakville, Ontario… no longer Bermuda. Between the GoFundMe, the Sign in interview, the IETF creator file, and the overlapping Quadlii id, all indicators point out that the Bermuda-based “Jamie Thain” and the Canadian AI-focused “James Thain” usually are the similar particular person.
With regards to AI, Thain has been slightly prematurely on his utilization of it. He instructed The Sign in outright that he’d used chatbots whilst operating at the draft and considers that fresh observe. For what it is value, AI-detection equipment did flag massive chunks of the record as most probably machine-written, however so-called “AI detectors” are notoriously unreliable and should not be used as a method to pass judgement on the standard of written content material. Thain’s personal admission strains up with the whole lot else about him: Quadlii’s complete pitch is that AI tooling can care for what he describes as trillions of greenbacks of technical debt. Him being somebody who believes a big language fashion can draft a sprawling protocol suite to upend lots of the fashionable internet would seem to be fully on model.
His view in this comes from an enchanting position, although. From what I may in finding, considered one of Thain’s prior ventures was once shrunk to construct virtual, cell packages for Bermuda executive products and services delivered thru a unmarried portal: they had been identity-linked, approval-gated methods citizens and travellers each used. IPv8’s focal point on collapsing a sprawl of independently-evolved products and services into one authenticated device is that very same idea scaled from a central authority portal to all of the web, and it is accomplished through folding DHCP, DNS, time, authentication, and telemetry into one control aircraft. I could not test that the ones executive methods used the similar OAuth/JWT authentication fashion IPv8 imagines, however there is a trend of pondering right here regardless. Funnily sufficient, Quadlii makes the similar pitch for endeavor tool: it is one composable device rather than a large number of bespoke ones. His personal framing of the protocol leans onerous on id, pitching the ASN baked into each handle as a “caller ID.” It is the similar unify-and-authenticate manner, simply taken to another goal.
Granted, it is indubitably a stretch to learn too a lot into all this, however it is a constant sufficient trend that is helping provide an explanation for why this actual particular person produced this actual over-unified design. Oh, and all of that is with out entering the privateness sides, as tying each handle to an ASN-derived organisational prefix could make it considerably more uncomplicated to trace down folks on the web.
Thain has additionally been open about his motivations for publishing this proposal. Requested on a networking mailing record whether or not there was once a business play, he stated there have been “no patent apps it is all unfastened,” and, through his personal account, the entire thing began as a downtime challenge, writing that “not too long ago all over a little of Hiatis [sic], I invented IPv8.” He then filed 3 revisions in 4 days and introduced a crowdfunder with a function of 100,000 Canadian bucks to construct an open-source testbed. Publicly, it seems extra like a trustworthy long-shot than an easy grift.
A united entrance in opposition to IPv8
By means of the standard regulations, a person draft like this simply more or less… disappears, however this one did not. Granted, no longer all the interactions this challenge gained had been simply dunking on it, however moderately a couple of of them had been. Probably the most fascinating and helpful responses, although, got here from the individuals who took it critically on goal.
Jason Rahm was once one such particular person, a senior answers architect at F5, who wrote a complete evaluation titled “IPv8 Would Repair My Routing Tables. It Will By no means Send,” and it is in fact a just right learn. Rahm appreciated a couple of portions of it, such because the backward compatibility, as wrong as it can be. He stated that it was once “the only factor this will get proper that IPv6 were given mistaken.” As smartly, the bounded routing desk, that /16 flooring dragging the worldwide desk down from masses of 1000’s of routes towards a pair hundred thousand, addresses “an issue I spent part my occupation explaining to shoppers.” And the Value Issue metric, he reckoned, is “the routing metric OSPF and EIGRP at all times sought after to be.”
His verdict, although, was once that none of it issues. “IPv6 did not combat as it solved the mistaken drawback,” he wrote. “It struggled as it solved just one drawback in a device the place operators wanted a number of to be solved at the same time as.” IPv8’s addiction of fixing they all directly turns into its personal dying sentence, as a result of “monolithic suites hardly ever” get followed, “simply ask OSI.” And the actual roadblock is not ambition, it is incentives: “IPv8 may not fail as a result of it is too bold. It’ll fail as a result of nobody with price range authority is experiencing sufficient ache to justify changing the device.”
Simon Painter was once much less beneficiant (however considerably extra entertaining), regarding the entire thing as “an April Idiot that ran a few weeks past due,” helped alongside through a spouse spec referred to as “WiFi8” that collides head-on with 802.11bn, the real subsequent technology of Wi-Fi. He nonetheless made room to shield IPv6’s real-world file, noting it carries round part of Google’s site visitors in this day and age. What was once fascinating, although, was once that the extra considerate responses did not merely deal with Thain as an fool. They identified that he was once treating routing, addressing, control, and safety as one attached drawback, an intuition some other people quietly admired, sooner than seeking to clear up it all in one unilateral push, which none of them idea might be able to paintings.
A draft like that is simple to report and difficult to are living as much as
Submitting a draft seems onerous, even though it is not
Little or no stood between Thain and the illusion of authority. Submitting an Web-Draft does not desire a working-group sponsor, nor does it want prior credentials and even one thing so simple as a technical endorsement. The structure required to report a draft was a coarse proxy for seriousness, as a result of generating it took a large number of effort and information that acted as a herbal clear out for informal submissions. It is very similar to what is taking place to vulnerability analysis in a way; the usage of AI to “uncover” a vulnerability and draft a write-up overcomes the herbal barrier that avoided outright bogus reviews.
That clear out was once vastly vital, and the proliferation of AI has been the very best catalyst to vintage Dunning-Kruger traps. The individual in the back of the file is continuously simply a professional sufficient to invite the AI to construct one thing, however no longer a professional sufficient to judge the output. What Thain demonstrates is not as egregious an instance as you could possibly in finding somewhere else, for the reason that he obviously is aware of some genuine networking. Alternatively, realizing BGP and EIGRP is some distance from working out why the worldwide routing desk, multihoming, fixed-function silicon, and the social economics of migration all conspire to make a “simply change it” protocol inconceivable, and the polish of the output makes that hole more difficult to identify on an preliminary learn. Readers may also be fooled on a primary go, however stepping away and coming again makes the cracks more uncomplicated to look. Thain is at the mistaken facet of that loop completely, although, as a result of comparing the output calls for precisely the information the AI was once status in for.
His frustration, for what it is value, is genuine and extensively shared. IPv6 adoption is taking place, even though the migration continues to be painfully incomplete. Thain’s -02 revision of IPv8 is ready to run out on October 19, 2026, like each unattended draft does, and absent a operating organization adopting it, that is virtually indubitably the place it ends. The protocol may not repair the web, however it did display how convincingly one particular person and a chatbot can now imitate the article that may.
