Asia Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses 321
ZerXes writes "It seems that APNIC has just released the last block of IPv4 addresses and are now completely out, a lot faster then expected. Even though APNIC received 3 /8 blocks in February the high growth of mobile devices made the addresses run out even before the summer. 'From this day onwards, IPv6 is mandatory for building new Internet networks and services,' says APNIC Director General Paul Wilson."
Re:So which is which? (Score:5, Informative)
More information directly from APNIC here. [apnic.net]
Re:NAT to the rescue... NOT (Score:5, Informative)
"""Network Address Translation [wikipedia.org] could provide some relief I think...no?"""
No.
BACKGROUND:
NAT, in the way which can be used by ISPs to reduce the need for IP addresses, works by mapping multiple internal IP addresses to a external one (or groups of external ones). So say you have a one thousand computers you need to keep online and you have only 100 addresses. NAT will allow you to logically map those 100 addresses to the one thousand computers.
NAT is able to do this by connection tracking. The router keeps in memory what connections were created with what external IP address and then routes the data from the reply back to the original host. So say my browser opens up a socket on 192.168.1.129:59343 and connects to Google on "www.google.com:80". The NAT router opens up a connection on 208.32.20.1:78190, connects to 'www.google.com:80'. When the machine listening on 'www.google.com:80' sends information back to 208.32.20.1:78190. Any data received on 208.32.20.1:78190 then automatically gets forwarded to 192.168.1.129:59343, which then is received by my browser.
WHY NAT IS FULL OF FAIL:
The reason that NAT + IPv4 is not a substitute for IPv6 is because the number of sockets that a router can open and manage is less then 16bits. That is the socket numbering scheme is 16bit scheme, of which a substantial number of sockets are reserved for specific protocols. That is less then 60,000 possible connections can be made by a router with a single public IP address.
Each new connection made by a machine behind a new router requires a new socket established. Just by having 3 tabs on my browser right now I am using roughly 20 connections. Each connection is going to a ad provider, google, different slashdot.org servers, etc etc.
Say that a internet user is using about 50 active connections at any one time then that means that 1 public address can only support about 1200 concurrent users. But it will break down long before that. People using bittorrent may use 300 TCP connections, which means that you can only support a 100-200 users.
The other aspect of this is that there is not enough IPv4 addresses for internet routers. That is a new ISP will run out of IP addresses long before they are even finish building their infrastructure!!! There wouldn't be enough addresses to even setup NAT routers!
This is taken care of by 'Carrier Grade NAT'. Which is you use NAT firewalls for your NAT firewall.
So....
Internet ----> NAT firewall -----(TCP tunnelled over TCP) ----> NAT firewall ----> Your home NAT router ----> Your PC.
Ever wonder why your bittorrent connections turn to shit!?
For Asia users this is already not good enough. They have RUN OUT. They cannot use NAT to extend it any further... they are over and done with.
Why not just make sockets 32bit or 64bit? Because that's retarded when you have IPv6, that's why.
I am currently running a IPv6 /32 network for my PERSONAL HOME NETWORK. All these are real, public, IP addresses.
79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336 addresses and 4,294,967,296 sub networks.
A subnet for IPv6 is a /64 network. 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses in a /64 subnet.
When IPv6 rolls around most people will end up getting a /48 network address. This is _only_ 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 addresses and 65,536 networks.
There are 281,474,976,710,656 /48 network addresses in total to give away. We will now only have to worry about IP address exhaustion when the human race becomes interstellar.
So, yeah, IPv4 luddites with their NAT savior complexes can go screw themselves. I want a efficient, open, and secure internet. NAT precludes this.
Well of course (Score:5, Informative)
The US invented the Internet. The Internet originally started as ARPANET a research network designed by DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency of the US Department of Defense. It started out as a link between a few US research universities and institutes. TCP/IP was then developed by Robert Kahn and Vince Cerf, working for DARPA. DARPA liked it and funded the development of the software to implement it.
After that various other government entities created TCP/IP networks based around ARPANET like the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and so on. Those unified in to what become the Internet.
Now that is not to say it did not become a global endevour. Around the time the Internet came to be, CERN made their own TCP network, CERNET, and then they started looking to link up with the US Internet and did so around 1989. Also CERN of course developed the basis of the world wide web. However the Internet itself started in the US.
That's why IANA, the ultimate top level controller of Internet numbers, is based in the US. It was created there to manage things on ARPANET.
You have to remember that nobody who was designing this was thinking "Global communications system that links every computer, every phone, every TV, etc on the planet." Such a concept was really pretty unimaginable. This was just an effort to get an efficient, interoperable network for linking big institutions.
So when IPs first started being handed out it was done inefficently. If you were real big, you got a Class A (/8, 16 million), if you were moderately sized a Class B (/16, 65 thousand) if you were small you got a Class C (/24, 256). Companies like AT&T and IBM got entire Class As for themselves. Most of that went to US entities, since they were the only ones who could get on at the time. ARPANET and some of the other research networks like NSFNET that started all this were only for research institutions and public entities. So only universities, research labs (like SRI), the military, and companies involved in the research could get on and thus get addresses.
Yes, yes, all bad in hindsight but who knew the Internet would become what it has? It also is just how shit goes. You invent something, you get to have it your way.
Neil Degrasse Tyson calls it "naming rights" and shows how it happens when various cultures are on the top of their game R&D wise. The US invented the Internet, so they got to have things like .gov for their government sites. The US invented the telephone system so they get 1 as their country code. The British invented the post office so they don't have to put their country on stamps, everyone else does.
The Internet shows a lot of slant towards the US because it started there, and developed most fully there first. The US by far had (and still has) the most advanced Internet infrastructure. The invented it, they were there first and best, that is why it is theirs in many ways.
Re:geographic distribution (Score:4, Informative)
Not really, X.25 networks had gone global (International Packet Switch Stream) at a time the Internet was still purely an American toy. The Internet became global because the rest of the world had got there first - hardware-wise, at least. All the early transatlantic links were IPSS lines re-purposed, as was all the early European Internet capability. The Americans got the software side first.
Since the modern Internet is a marriage between software and hardware, and not one or the other alone, the only fair conclusion is that it was a global invention with no nation being able to claim credit for being truly first.