I was saying adding a byte to the address so its a 40 bit address which would be two bytes to the header. Obviously it would still have the same issue where hardware and software would be incompatible and would need to be replaced but the same concepts that worked in IPv4 would work in my fake protocol instead of IPv6 where the network needs to be redesigned from the ground up.
Also IPv6 addresses are ugly
How sure are you that 40 bits is a good number of bits? What's your justification? It takes over 30 years to deploy new bits, so you have to be really sure before you start that effort.
40 bits would've bought us a lot of time and would've kicked the can down the road several decades. People from the future would be much better equipped to design a new protocol because they understand their needs better.
> It takes over 30 years
Only because it is overengineered. Parents pragmatic protocol would have been adopted faster