IPv6’s huge increase in address space is an important factor in the
development of the Internet of Things. According to Steve Leibson,
who identifies himself as “occasional docent at the Computer
History Museum,” the address space expansion means that we
could “assign an IPV6 address to every atom on the surface of the
earth, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+
earths.” In other words, humans could easily assign an IP address
to every "thing" on the planet. An increase in the number of smart
nodes, as well as the amount of upstream data the nodes
generate, is expected to raise new concerns about data privacy,
data sovereignty and security.