Last Available IPv4 Blocks Allocated 312
stoborrobots writes "Following on from APNIC's earlier assessment that they would need to request the last available /8 blocks, they have now been allocated 39/8 and 106/8, triggering ARIN's final distribution of blocks to the RIRs. According to the release, 'APNIC expects normal allocations to continue for a further three to six months.'"
Re:240/4 subnets (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a lot of legacy IPv4 software in networking components will not route packets going to those addresses, since they were designated as future use a long time ago.
Since that software would have to be updated, it might as well just be updated to IPv6.
Re:Why can't we go after legacy space? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why can't we go after legacy space? (Score:4, Insightful)
We can ask them to do that. In fact some organisations that initially had very large (/8) allocations have already given some of their pool back. However, the growth of the internet is consuming a /8 worth of IPs every 4-6 weeks, at present. So even if all organisations with a /8 gave it back, it'd give us maybe a year's extra time, if that.
Re:240/4 subnets (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, and it was also stupid to only use 32 bits for the address.
A lot of dumb decisions were made in the early days of the internet when they didn't know how far reaching those decisions would turn out to be or the problems they would eventually cause.
Re:So the question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Y2K was perfectly legitimate. It was only through heroic efforts that programmers were able to overcome years of managerial negligence and get the changes made in a knick of time.
When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all. -- God, (Futurama, 2002)
Re:where are IPV6 routers and modems?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, IPv6 autoconfiguration?
And who renumbers? No one should be typing in IPs anywhere anymore. DHCPv6 and DNS and now you're done.
Re:240/4 subnets (Score:5, Insightful)
Except they were not stupid and they were not dumb. You look at your megabytes and gigabytes of RAM and think of course that's stupid. But a current era machine would be something like the Apple II with 4 kB - 4096 bytes - of RAM, where it really, really matter if an IP address takes up 4 bytes or 8 bytes. Or if you use 2 or 4 digits to store the year. By the time TCP/IP became official, cutting edge machines like the IBM PC and Spectrum Z80 had 16 kB.
You must remember that TCP/IP was designed only around the time people started to imagine the possibility of a personal computer, and even then it was for the few and rich. That we'd all get together in one big network was even further out, I used to dial BBS for many years before I got on the Internet, even though it already existed as such.
Even today when there's far more people and people are much richer than 30 years ago there's only about 2 billion people on the Internet, even if you assumed a PC for everyone we'd still be good for another while. But I have a PC at home and at work and in my pocket and it all adds up. But who had that crystal ball in the late 70s/early 80s and what if they did?
Sure, you could have just picked some impossibly huge number that'd obviously be enough for everything. But it would have had a huge and immediate impact on memory consumption and cost there and then. We're not talking about short sighted businessmen that only care about the next quarter here. We're talking about things that could only be a problem decades down the road if this becomes a megahit. Sure it's shitty for us, but that's not their fault. Particularly when people have been waving the warning flags for years and everybody's happily ignored it until we hit the brick wall.
Re:So the question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of it was overrated but some of it actually helped by kicking the people who needed to open their wallets. Y2K consulting was painfully expensive because it was all done at the last minute when everyone who knew what they were doing was busy. Had the same companies started even a few years earlier they would most likely have been able to get the same service at half the price.
IPv6 is the same stupidity all over again. A few years back I worked for an isp and asked if I could try some test IPv6 deployments but was refused because no one could see a need for it in the next quarter. I don't even want to know how much work it will take them to set it up now that it is an emergency.