What Happens When IPv4 Address Space Is Gone 520
darthcamaro writes 'We all know that IPv4 address space is almost all gone — but how will we know when the exact date is? And what will happen that day? In a new report, ARIN's CIO explains exactly what will happen on that last day of IPv4 address availability: '"We will run out of IPv4 address space and the real difficult part is that there is no flag date. It's a real moving date based on demand and the amount of address space we can reclaim from organizations," Jimmerson told InternetNews.com. "If things continue they way they have, ARIN will for the very first time, sometime between the middle and end of next year, receive a request for IPv4 address space that is justified and meets the policy. However, ARIN won't have the address space. So we'll have to say no for the very first time."'
Re:Auction? (Score:4, Informative)
There are a few. See figure 5 of Geoff Huston's IPv4 Address Report [potaroo.net].
Re:So now the question is... (Score:5, Informative)
Trying? I'm done.
Re:Easy (Score:2, Informative)
Happens often in small companies that grow and run only a single subnet with a /24.
While this is always easy to fix, some companies don't want to risk restructuring their LAN.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
They definitely say no. Not only that, if the utilization of your existing IP space drops below a certain threshold, ARIN will start taking it back. And they won't take back your emptier networks, they'll take back whatever they want (usually the largest ones, i.e. the ones you most want to keep). They also no longer issue anything bigger than... I think a /22? It might even be smaller.
Everybody except ARIN was always like this, of course. ARIN could afford to be more generous because the US has a disproportionately large number of IPs for its population (and even for its server count). But now they're in the same boat as APNIC and RIPE, so they've gotten much stricter than they used to be.
Re:Hmm no big deal will happen? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Internet is Full (Score:4, Informative)
Oh great, artificial scarcity caused by greedy bastards refusing to upgrade because they're either too cheap to upgrade or looking to make a buck selling unused addresses...
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
add some protocol translation to their network to deal with anything that can't handle IPv6
You do realize that you need IPv4 addresses to do that, don't you? IPv4 systems can't talk to you if you don't have IPv4 addresses. Let's say you want to host virtual private servers for 1000 customers and each server must be individually reachable from the IPv4-only internet. What do you do if you can't get 1000 IPv4 addresses? Nothing, you're fucked.
Re:The Internet is Full (Score:2, Informative)
Um, you do know it's really tough for an IPv4 system to find you if you only have an IPv6 address, right?
Do you have an answer on how being cut off from large swaths of the internet is a good thing? Something other than "it's no big deal" like the rest of your posts [slashdot.org]?
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Informative)
You know what is going to happen the first time ARIN says no? The organization will go "Oh, ok.Can I get a nice block of IPv6 instead?" and add some protocol translation to their network to deal with anything that can't handle IPv6. Done. Problem solved.
Except, that block of addresses will be worthless since no one who uses brain-dead ISPs (ie, 99% of them) will be able to connect to you.
And that "protocol translation" is functionally identical to NAT, with all of its downsides. In fact, the popular solutions for that are named NAT64 and NAT46, even though they are a bit more heavyweight, requiring DNS hackery. And both do absolutely nothing a dual-stack node can't do. Hint: all modern systems are dual-stack.
Re:Hmm no big deal will happen? (Score:4, Informative)
Funny. Despite the amount of posts you have created here, you still don't realize where the real problem is. For any IPv4 host to reach your IPv6 hosts through protocol translation, you still need to have an IPv4 address. And this is a problem if there are no more IPv4 addresses available.
Try a thought experiment, you are an IPv4 host on the "old" internet, and you are trying to ping an IPv6 host behind protocol translation. What will you write to the command line? I would be interested to see how you would manage to answer this without the IPv6 host having an IPv4 address assigned as well.
Of course you are correct about all the routers and operating systems being IPv6 ready. But that is not the problem, accessing the old internet is the problem.
Youtube + Apple = ISP IPv6 (Score:4, Informative)
There are currently two companies forcing the hand of the consumer ISPs to adopt IPv6.
Since February this year Youtube has put all the actual media reachable on IPv6 as default when you access the youtube website through their normal DNS name.
Apple's time capsule and airport extreme by default sets up IPv6 through tunnels.
This means that a lot of people with Apple computers browsing youtube movies are heavy users of IPv6.
As there are only a few tunnel brokers, the load on those will be quite high.
Re:The Internet is Full (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The Internet is Full (Score:5, Informative)
GE - 3.nnn.nnn.nnn
IBM - 9.nnn.nnn.nnn
AT&T Bell Labs 12.nnn.nnn.nnn
Xerox 13.nnn.nnn.nnn
HP 15.nnn.nnn.nnn
DEC 16.nnn.nnn.nnn
Apple 17.nnn.nnn.nnn
MIT 18.nnn.nnn.nnn
Ford 19.nnn.nnn.nnn
CSC 20.nnn.nnn.nnn
Halliburton 34.nnn.nnn.nnn
Eli Lilly Co 40.nnn.nnn.nnn
Bell Northern Research 47.nnn.nnn.nnn
Prudential 48.nnn.nnn.nnn
UK Work and Pensions 51.nnn.nnn.nnn
Dupont 52.nnn.nnn.nnn
Cap Debis 53.nnn.nnn.nnn
Merck 54.nnn.nnn.nnn
USPS 56.nnn.nnn.nnn
Defense doesn't need 7 - count them - 7 all to itself!
That's 26 - more than 10% - that can be mostly harvested.
Re:hype.. (Score:3, Informative)
this is one of the biggest hypes since the y2k bug fiasco... they've been telling us we're going to run out next year for YEARS now..
No they haven't. At least not the serious people. 2011 has been the projected year for quite a while. Easily verified by just using archive.org to look at the history of the potaroo.net automated IPv4 exhaustion counter. It has tracked 2011 as the year of exhaustion since at least 2006 (first entry in archive.org)
Re:The Internet is Full (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Internet is Full (Score:2, Informative)
There's no portion of the IPv6 address space that corresponds to IPv4 addresses.
Actually, I can think of at least two in regular use right now, 2002:A.B.C.D::/48 [6to4] and 2001:0:A.B.C.D::/64 [Teredo]. And we're [IETF] busy picking over a couple other ways to encode IPv4 addresses in IPv6 address, e.g. 6RD, DNS64, and that's just the currently active working group items. The individual submissions are almost a menagerie of strange encodings. You'll note I didn't mention the V4COMPAT and V4MAPPED address ranges.
If you're going to regurgitate anti-IPv6 talking points, you could at least bother to read the latest memos. Better trolls please!
Re:The Internet is Full (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting, I see you ignored the actual meat of my argument, instead focusing on what was really a bit of a tangental point. Nevertheless...
From a security point of view, most of their computers SHOULD be re-numbered so that their addresses aren't publicly routable.
Uhh, bullshit.
That's precisely equivalent to arguing that NAT somehow provides additional security over a traditional firewall, a statement any good network administrator realizes is pure crap.
As for needing those IPs, there are many reasons to use publicly routable IPs for corporate networks. VPNs are the most obvious... unless all your sites use unique private subnets (and that, by the way, includes people's homes), you *will* have problems the minute you try to connect them over a VPN.
But, again, it simply doesn't matter. Even if you *could* claw back those IPs, pushing off the transition 5 or 8 years is worthless, as you still need to transition eventually, and whether you do it now, or 8 years from now, it's still gonna suck, because no one is forward thinking enough to start the transition until the shortage is imminent.