As noted by Rob Adams, ls is sorting the files before displaying them. Note that if you are using NFS, the NFS server will be sorting the directory before sending it, and 2 million entries may well take longer than the NFS timeout. That makes the directory unlistable via NFS, even with the -f flag.
This may be true for other network file systems as well.
While there's no enforced limit to the number of entries in a directory, it's good practice to have some limit to the entries you anticipate.
