ARIN Letter Says Two More Years of IPv4 266
dew4au writes "A reader over at SANS Internet Storm Center pointed out a certified letter his organization received from ARIN. The letter notes that all IPv4 space will be depleted within two years and outlines new requirements for address applications. New submissions will require an attestation of accuracy from an
organizational officer. It also advises organizations to start addressing publicly accessible assets with IPv6. Is ARIN hoping to scare companies into action with the specter of scarce resources? This may be what's needed to spur adoption since there appears to be no business case for IPv6 deployment."
Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing gets fixed until it breaks so fully that people can't ignore it any longer. ARIN should just hand out the last of their IP assignment already and then we can move on with actually deploying IPv6.
IPv6 is depressing... (Score:4, Insightful)
...because whoever is in charge of it does such a crummy job of explaining what it is and why I should care, and more importantly, why my folks should care.
I got my router set up to use IPv6 (an Apple Time Capsule), and I went searching for some IPv6 love and found practically none. Yes I got to Google, and yes I found a few websites that seemed to do little more than blink(!) "hooray, you are connecting using IPv6! Your address is ..."
IPv6 needs both a killer app (IPv6-only Twitter, anyone?) and some ready-to-explain-why-you-can't-get-to-it documentation that will get the people to *demand* that they have IPv6 addresses.
Until then, it's a 32-bit address space world.
IPv4 Address Exhaustion Is Always Be 2 Years Away (Score:5, Insightful)
Case [slashdot.org] in point [slashdot.org]. Thought it was supposed to be 2010? Now it's 2011.
IPv4 addresses won't magically be exhausted one night. They'll just start getting more expensive.
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:2, Insightful)
A nit, I know, but DTV conversion had little to do with HD...
That's partially why so many idiots were confused.
As I keep pointing out (Score:5, Insightful)
As I keep pointing out on each IPv6 story, there will be little motivation to move to IPv6 until you can hit major sites, like cnn.com and slashdot.org, using nothing but IPv6 packets.
We've made a bit of progress, in that now, if you have IPv6 connectivity to "the Internet", you can in theory do the name resolution entirely by IPv6 packets, now that the root name servers support IPv6.
Note to the "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" crowd: yes, you can form an IPv6 packet with an IPv4 address, but that doesn't mean the target machine will actually be able to understand it - it is still a completely different packet type than an IPv4 packet.
So, does slashdot.org have IPv6 enabled? Does the colo housing slashdot.org's servers route IPv6 packets from the Internet to the slashdot.org servers? Can "the Internet" route IPv6 packets to the colo?
If a tech site like slashdot.org doesn't have the ability to handle IPv6 traffic, then why should I get all hot and bothered about trying to get IPv6? And if I'm not going to demand it, then why should my ISP spend the effort to supply it?
Re:IPv4 Address Exhaustion Is Always Be 2 Years Aw (Score:4, Insightful)
They're already more expensive. The expense increase has been down in the noise for customers - that will no longer be true by the end of the year, and it will hurt by mid 2010.
IPv4 is no longer too cheap to meter. If that's not a business case for IPv6 I don't know what is.
Re:As I keep pointing out (Score:3, Insightful)
Or just do like the entertainment industry does, wait for the porn to be IPv6 enchanced, then IPv4 will be dead over night.
Re:I want IPv6 support, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
That 6to4 support [wikipedia.org] is bundling IPv6 packets and transmitting them inside an IPv4 packet. So technically, the poster is still using IPv4 with his linksys router.
I think the home router issue is the one that matters. I want IPv6, but simply cannot have it (unless I cough up lots of cash for a serious router). I think the home router manufacturers are missing something here, they just need to say they cannot release firmware updates, and that you need to buy a new router to get IPv6, which is obviously better. They then sell loads more routers.. I don't understand why they don't do this.
Mind you, a firmware update would be better for me :)
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously... why does Ford Motor company need a /8?
They need it so they can sell it when they go into Chapter 11
Re:We need ipv4.5 (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately, nobody in their right mind would let Slashdot design a new network protocol.
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:5, Insightful)
And there's absolutely no reason that those devices can't be assigned an address from the 10.x portion of RFC 1918. None at all, except for the magnitude of the problem.
They should have planned for that so, so long ago.
How much of ipv4 is dark right now? (Score:4, Insightful)
If we had a measurement that said that only 25% of the entire address space is in use at any one time, then maybe would would rethink our choices.
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As I keep pointing out (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure you could get the tail to shake the dog like that.
Those sites are important because they are easy to use and good at what they do (ok, Google is, anyway).
Users typically follow the path of least resistance. If Microsoft Live Search was the only search engine available to people who had ipv4 and ISPs were still only handing out /32 addresses, guess which search engine those people would use.
Of course, that wouldn't happen, because Google and Yahoo would retain their /32 addresses, because they're businesses designed to get money, not force social or technological change.
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ahead, yank 'em all back. Worldwide, the five RIRs (AfriNIC, ARIN, APNIC, LACNIC, RIPE) go through 12-14 /8s per year. Don't give yourself a charley-horse patting yourself on the back because you managed to move out the exhaustion date by 8 months.
BTW, the US Government *gave back* several /8s.
IPv4 is terminal. Get over it and get your IPv6 on.
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:4, Insightful)
THIS. Mod A/C parent up.
Reclaiming class As only delays things slightly, and doesn't fix the inescapable math.
But it's much easier to bitch and point fingers at evil corporations like Ford, than it is to pick up a damn book and learn how IPv6 works.
Re:We need ipv4.5 (Score:3, Insightful)
Why couldn't we just add another octect.
Because if we're going to completely break networking, we might as well switch to something that fixes a lot of IPv4's problems (such as, say, IPv6).
economics as usual (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, the problem is hoarding of unused IPv4 addresses.
We'd be just fine if it weren't for folks like MIT that have way more IP's than they need.
Of course, when a resource gets tight, the folks who have it become kings. You can bet your behind no company is going to give up it's v4's without a fight.
I'm glad that IPv6 is based upon a stewardship model rather than an ownership model. And also that the v6 guys are leaving 87 percent of the potential v6 namespace unallocated
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:3, Insightful)
+5 Insightful again?
Can't we just let this die? There are plenty of unused IPv4 addresses, sure. Most are hard to get due to political problems. No company will re-IP all their network just out of goodwill. So what?
The sooner IPv4 addresses end the better. Any quantity that is salvaged is just delaying the inevitable, and hurting IPv6. We could be in a much better infrastructure today if it wasn't for all this whining and "business case"ing.
So what that these companies can make a buck selling the addresses? Anyone dumb enough to pay instead of upgrading does not deserve the money.
Re:I want IPv6 support, but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not true, and you mentioned the killer app in the very next sentence: end-to-end connectivity. Having real, working end-to-end connectivity is a big deal, but most people don't know it because they're accustomed to living on a network where there is no end-to-end connectivity.
So if you want to see more IPv6 deployment, start developing apps on top of Miredo/Teredo that really make use of it. When there's enough encapsulated IPv6 running across your ISP's network, it'll actually save them money to switch to native IPv6.
Re:I want IPv6 support, but ... (Score:3, Insightful)
DD-WRT. Of course, this assumes you aren't running one of the crippled Linksys routers that don't have enough memory to support a Linux kernel...
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:3, Insightful)