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."
It's to try to get some attention (Score:5, Interesting)
Class A Address Space (Score:3, Interesting)
How about they take back the Class A address space owned by companies who probably aren't even utilizing it. Here's a list of a few companies who have class A licenses and you wonder how much of it they are even using:
General Electric 3.0.0.0 - 3.255.255.255
IBM 9.0.0.0 - 9.255.255.255
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center 13.0.0.0 - 13.255.255.255
Hewlett-Packard 15.0.0.0 - 15.255.255.255
Hewlett-Packard (originally DEC, then Compaq) 16.0.0.0 - 16.255.255.255
Apple Inc. 17.0.0.0 - 17.255.255.255
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 18.0.0.0 - 18.255.255.255
Ford Motor Company 19.0.0.0 - 19.255.255.255
Royal Signals and Radar Establishment 25.0.0.0 - 25.255.255.255
Halliburton Company 34.0.0.0 - 34.255.255.255
Why the hell do some of these companies even need 16+ million addresses? I can't see them utilizing the space available, but maybe someone here can enlighten me on how that is done (aside from trying to justify a public IP address for every workstation).
Set the Way-Back Machine 2 years... (Score:3, Interesting)
...wait, didn't they say the same thing then??!?
Re:What about my toaster? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's assuming packed addressing. IPv6 is hierarchical, which means that it's largely sparse addressing, so your theory doesn't hold up. However, since each home network has 48 bits of address space, you still have enough addresses for your monitor - you just won't be able to use the mobility option.
We need ipv4.5 (Score:1, Interesting)
I think ipV6 is to much of a move. IP addresses are nice and easy to remember like phone numbers. Yes IPv6 has short hand, but it is still harder.
Why couldn't we just add another octect. So my new IP is 1.24.101.1.15. That gives use 2^40 (~1 trillion) versus 2^128(unfuckincredibly big). We made way to big of a jump.
There is also virtually no need to upgrade to v6 for internal communications. We have 10, 172 and 192 which is more then enough for even the largest companies.
I guess we are going to become even more dependent on DNS for everything. I can't imagine someone actually typing a full ipV6 hex address. Mabye the easy ones ::::::b00b:8008
Re:Nothing gets fixed until it breaks (Score:2, Interesting)
..do you really think they are going to re-IP a network that size.
If given proper notice that they will be losing the class A license, then I'm sure they would. There is almost no justification for a corporation to have public IP addresses for VOIP phones, Desktops, Laptops, and many network components (switches, routers, etc) which strictly reside on their internal network.
Why would businesses care? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have 6 IPs just for personal use. Every big networking company that controls some portion of the Internet is set for IPv4 space for a while. There just isn't room for anyone new to enter into the market. This is a huge advantage for those already established companies. I don't think they intentionally planned it this way, but the scarcity of address is a short term advantage for too many businesses for us to simply ignore that and keep pushing IPv6 as if is of some automatic benefit to everyone. Don't get me wrong, I would be thrilled if Comcast and others moved me over to IPv6. Maybe with a massive address space scanning IP blocks for SSH logins and open firewalls would no longer be as a productive use of botnet time.
Re:We need ipv4.5 (Score:5, Interesting)
Awesome idea. We'll give Google 1/40, The government can 2/40, IBM will get 3/40, etc etc etc
Same problem. The ipv6 is not a "bad" idea, it's just sort of like...imagine in 1950s if the phone company decided "we could go with area codes to subdivide numbers to prevent running out, or we could use letters AND numbers".
Can you imagine the upheaval?
In a lot of ways, that would have been even easier to deal with, because everyone's phone was owned by AT&T. New phones could have been issued without too much problem.
No, imagine it instead in the mid 1980s. Ma Bell doesn't own the phones any more, in fact there are tons of cheap phones available, cell phones are starting to come out, and there are still rotary AND push button phones.
That's more like what the IPv6 switch is like. Do you give the new people 2 numbers, so that grandma can still call them? How long is it before you stop accepting legacy phones that only have 10 dialing options? How the hell do you get DTMF to work with 36 numbers? Do we need area codes? It would be weird without them, but we don't really need them.
The equivalent of these questions are still being asked. Just a couple of months ago, there was a huge to-do about NAT and IPv6. "IPv6 is a world without NAT". The hell it is. My internal routers don't get publicly routable IP addresses, even if I have to NAT back to IPv4.
When the wrinkles get ironed out, we're going to wonder how we ever did without it. During the transition, it's going to be hell for everyone (with the possible exception of the clueless end user, who might have to buy a new router at most).
Re:IPv6 is depressing... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have your killer app right here [ipv6experiment.com].
No killer app needed, just sensible migration path (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, I would claim that that's not a big deal. The big problem is that IPv6 just doesn't provide a sensible migration path from IPv4. The idea that we're all going to wake up one day and switch off IPv4 at once just doesn't cut it. More precisely, an IPv4 node just has no way of talking to an IPv6 node. If we built some sort of standardized IPv4-to-IPv6 NAT technology that was invisible to existing IPv4 nodes, then IPv6 could be adopted gradually and incrementally with minimal cost (the cost could be rolled into the cost of general network gear upgrades).
Re:We need ipv4.5 (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a couple of months ago, there was a huge to-do about NAT and IPv6. "IPv6 is a world without NAT". The hell it is. My internal routers don't get publicly routable IP addresses, even if I have to NAT back to IPv4.
I agree with the sentiment - however, it's one of policy, not mechanism. NAT is a pretty poor substitute for a router that implements policy (known as a firewall). NAT has literally an all-or-nothing granularity. For instance, I might want to specify that an internal host can enable BitTorrent via UPnP, but under no circumstances can CIFS be allowed through - in either direction. An internal host sending a CIFS solicitation out does not mean a pinhole should be opened and some set of hosts (depending on cone of restriction) free to respond. NAT is just not a practical policy tool. It's an address space recovery tool. Reverse NAT, however, has some redeeming qualities for load balancing and failover - I'm not versed well enough in IPv6 to understand how they'd be implemented without NAT. (Anycast addressing, I suppose.)
But you can implement NAT in IPv6 just as much as in IPv4 if you wish. A router could appear to have a single interface ID and translate to/from that. It's largely unnecessary though since instead of a handful of IPv4 addresses you have an entire 64-bit space to yourself (and maybe even the SLN prefix, not sure about that).
IPv6 really is a major cleanup and simplification from IPv4. I'm slightly disconcerted by the increased dependency on DNS however.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
I manage two /48 IPv6 netblocks. I can remember them just as easily as I do v4 addresses. While autoconfiguration is the preferred method for v6 devices, you can assign addresses manually. So, the host that I have on (my.ip.prefix).20, is also (my.ipv6.prefix)::20.
Re:Class A Address Space (Score:3, Interesting)
How about they take back the Class A address space owned by companies who probably aren't even utilizing it
Sure you can say "they don't need them", but so what. They've been purchased. You can't just take back their address space.
Actually, the addresses are not "owned" by the companies. They are just allocated. So, theoretically, ARIN could deallocate them. The problem is that people would object and file lawsuits; besides, ARIN has no way to enforce the deallocation of addresses, as ARIN could simply be ignored. If that happened, you now have more than one machine per address, which is bad. Besides, it would only postpone the inevitable, and not by that much.
So, the proposal won't work because it would be a lot of work, be destabilizing, and not actually have a worthwhile payoff.
Killer app (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd argue there is never going to be a killer app for IPv6 because it is nothing more than window dressing on the same old, boring protocols. The true killer app will be on a protocol that is nothing like TCP/IP... say a working mesh protocol where there is no notion ports, IP addresses or any of that nonsense. Where you don't care where the data you get comes from as long as it is authentic. That is the future. Bit torrent is the closest we have to that future and bit-torrent is nothing but a hack of TCP/IP. If the protocol stack was built from the ground up to not care about the source of data, only that it is authentic, *then* you'd have a killer app.
IPv6 is boring and it isn't even mainstream. How about we cook up something new. Remember when TCP/IP was the new kid on the block and most games had dual or tri-network stacks (TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, Netbeui)? It only took like a few years before all that nonsense went away and we all settled on TCP/IP. Basically, overnight. The same thing *will* happen again. Only it will *not* be IPv6. Mark my words. We've outgrown what IP gives us... The mesh is the future.
IP itself is hierarchical, that is the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Nobody will adopt IPv6 because it is just a larger tree. It doesn't scale the way we are now using it. The way we are starting to use our network is peer-2-peer--dare I even say "cloud-like"?
We dont care where the information comes from, only that it is the real deal. It could come from some data center, some server pool, a microwave, the cell phone, the car stereo, or your neighbors TV... doesn't matter. As long as I know the data is authentic, the source doesn't matter. That is exactly what bit-torrent is about. Only bit-torrent needs a tracker because of the deficenies of TCP/IP. If the network was all about data and how to get to it, rather than maintaining connections between two devices, we wouldn't need trackers or bit-torrent. And when you think about it, this is how it needs to be. Otherwise all the traffic has to aggrigate through larger and larger "central" links--down the tree and back up the tree to the other side. That is what we have now--it is the mindset of IP... you start and the edge node and work in than out to another edge... This doesn't scale and it gives a lot of power to the guys with the big pipes (i.e. your cable company or mega-ISP). Bit-torrent is really a mesh of interconnected goo. That is how it should be--only as a fundamental feature of the network. Focus on the data, not on end to end connections.
IPv6 is more of the same. The fact that it is hierarchical is a bug, not a feature.
Re:IPv6 is depressing... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.ipv6porn.com/ [ipv6porn.com]
Re:What about my toaster? (Score:4, Interesting)
> I thought IPv6 split the network and local address segments right down the middle (i.e. each is 64-bit).
From what I remember, that was more or less the plan circa 2002-2004. The main problem with the original address allocation scheme was that it left big gaps in places that made it nice to route, but a bitch to memorize and rendered the proposed shortcut notation all but useless. Originally, they planned to use the upper 3 bits as a grand macro-level version indicator, then leave the next byte zero for now, then hop and skip over the next few bytes using the lower bit or two of each byte until they got to the "meat" of the address somewhere around bytes 5-8. That would have resulted in lovely addresses like 100:103:401:3f7a:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx which, if you actually used your MAC address to set the lower 48 bits, would have been all but impossible to meaningfully encode with the "::" zero-packing shortcut. At best, you might have ended up with 2 pairs of sequential zero bytes to compress, and had to pick one or the other.
The problem is... (Score:3, Interesting)
...they keep saying that in $SMALL_NUM years we'll be out of IP addresses, and $SMALL_NUM years goes by without incident. The sky persistently fails to fall.
Call it the peril of poor predictions, but I'm now officially not worried because the claims have so often been false.