After receiving a request from Martin on the misc@ mailing list to make IPv6 the default version for netcalc, I decided to implement my original idea of dynamically detecting which version IP address the user supplies so that no switch is necessary to discern the two. It was a trivial change but definitely an improvement; and, like Martin remarked, "it's 2019 after all." Despite the fact that IPv4 still traffics most of the Internet with approximately 75% coverage, any encouragement to implement its successor should be the default position.

I am a little surprised that IPv6 wasn't the default being taught at …

UPDATE: netcalc has a newer version available.

tl;dr: download netcalc—an IPv4 and IPv6 subnet calculator—to make subnetting easier.

In one of my Computer Science units last year we studied subnetting. It was really interesting but also highly programmatic. So like any good CS student, when faced with a repetitive problem to solve—such as calculating subnets—you automate the process; which I did! I first wrote a program in Python but then decided to create one in C. It only provided IPv4 functionality, though, as that's all we worked on at university. More recently, however, I thought I'd expand …