IPv4 Will Not Die In 2010

darthcamaro writes "A couple of years ago, the big shots at IANA (that's the people that handle internet addressing) issued a release stating that the IPv4 address space was likely to be gone by 2010. Here we are in 2010 and guess what, IPv4 with its 4.3 billion addresses will NOT be all used up this year. In fact there could be another two years worth of addresses still left at this point. 'We're at about 10.2 percent (IPv4 address space) remaining globally,' John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN said. 'At our current trend rate we've got about 625 days before we will not have new IPv4 addresses available. We're still handling IPv4 requests from ISPs, hosting companies and large users for IPv4 address space, but that's a very short time period.'"

IPv4 doesn't die

[rvw]

IPv4 doesn't die - it just runs out of available addresses.

Re:IPv4 doesn't die

[A beautiful mind]

Old programmers don't die, they just use an exploit to induce an overflow in the "time left to live" counter that runs the Reaper's scheduler.

Re:

[six11]

IPv4 will die shortly after x86 does, which is to say: a long time from now.

Re:IPv4 doesn't die

[Retric]

One of the quick and dirty ways to continuing to use IPv4 is to have some of the huge chunks of the address space given back. Do FORD, MIT, Apple, IBM, etc each need 256^3 addresses? (http://xkcd.com/195/) IPv4 has almost 256^4 or around 4 billion IP's that's almost one IP per person on the planet and plenty to last a *LONG* time.

Re:

[Goaway]

At current trends, the 10% remaining will last less than two years. 256^3 addresses is less than half a percent. One of those huge blocks would be gone in about a month. Even if you freed up every single IP address, that would not last very long. Probably less than ten years, as demand grows.

Re:IPv4 doesn't die

[Retric]

IP's are given away and there is no reason to give them back so of course there is a lot of demand and we are "running out". But don't think just because IANA runs out of IP's you will be unable to get new ones. They will just come with a price tag. It's a classic land grab, and people that got large chunks of IP space are going to start selling them as soon as there is no free competition.

Re:

[Bruha]

There are nearly 9 billion people on the planet. The problem of taking a Class A away from a company is that they would have to take years and millions of dollars to redo their address space to what you'll let them keep. We do not have that kind of time, and it's not as easy as you think to do such a thing. Getting a lawyer would be cheaper compared to the costs of changing ip addresses. There are servers out there that have ip's hard coded into them at the costs of tens of thousands of dollars to get i

Re:

[Dwonis]

IPv4 has almost 256^4 or around 4 billion IP's that's almost one IP per person on the planet and plenty to last a *LONG* time.

Now all we need to do is to replace all the routers on the Internet with ones that can manage 4 billion routing table entries. Wanna bet that IPv6 will be cheaper?

I foresee a temporary solution.

[TrisexualPuppy]

There are going to be lots of little solutions that will stretch out IPv4 for a while.

One that I came up would be to offer a financial incentive to reclaim unused blocks of addresses. Ten or fifteen years ago, IP address space was handed out like candy. You could get a class C block readily, and class B blocks just needed a little justification. I did some contract work in the late 90s for a company that I still keep up with, and they have a few entire C nets in their possession and not in use. Now how do we get these back? There is going to be demand for IP addresses, and as the supply becomes more and more limited, that demand will make people desperate.

So why not let people who already have address space sell what they have? It does reward unrightfully holding onto stuff, but if these addresses are needed, then hey!

It's about routing..

[tempest69]

If we let these companies sell off small chunks all over the place, you have routing weirdness; as companies will need to aggregate a bunch of small chunks. Then you have all of these small addresses that need their own entries in routing tables where a large address range would make the routing easier. And changing the routing tables becomes more of a mess, and the protocols (ala RIP, OSPF) need to work harder, causing more overhead. If properly implemented, IPV6 would prevent these kind of issues, as the address space is huge (nearly uncomprehensable).

Storm

IPv4 not dying...

[gandhi_2]

IPv4 not dying... Enterprise Networking Planet confirms it!

That just doesn't have the same ring to it. ):

Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing

[Kenshin]

Another two years? Good, now we can all can put off panicking for another two years and not do anything to resolve this in the meantime.

Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse than that, we'll continue to deal with the issues NAT causes, and I'm sure the various money grubbing ISP's will charge even more for additional IPs as we run out.

Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing

[Dragonslicer]

Issues that NAT causes? Like shielding n00bs from the wilds of the internet?

NAT is a blessing. It allows people to access the net without being exposed to it.

Someone should write some software that can be put on a router that would offer the same protection without also causing all the problems that come with NAT. It would be like this large barrier that burns up any unauthorized data that tries to get by.

Hopefully a good marketing person can think up a decent name for such a thing.

Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing

[Hadlock]

How about incinerator pit? Please contact me so I can get you in touch with my venture capitalists' financing division.

Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing

[Abcd1234]

Someone should write some software that can be put on a router that would offer the same protection without also causing all the problems that come with NAT. It would be like this large barrier that burns up any unauthorized data that tries to get by.

Yeah yeah! You mean like that, you know, wall-thing they put in cars between the passengers and the engine compartment in a car. You know, the thing that's meant to stop people from being burned by some sort of, like, fire or something? Man, what a great idea!

Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing

[Chris Burke]

Grandparent:
It would be like this large barrier that burns up any unauthorized data that tries to get by.

Parent:
You mean like that, you know, wall-thing they put in cars between the passengers and the engine compartment in a car.

Ah, and the difference between people who's visualization of a "fire wall" comes from real life, versus Advanced Dungeons and Dragons becomes clear. ;)

Re:There's plenty of addresses left. Don't panic.

[phantomfive]

You could easily use 64 bit addresses in IPV4 by sticking the rest of the source and destination addresses in the options field of the packet. But why? We would still need to upgrade all the routers and software to work with the new system, except we would be upgrading to a hack not a solution, and we would be ignoring the solution that has already been implemented in many computers around the world. As likely as not, IPv6 already works with the computer you are holding, it just needs to be turned on.

IPv6 is the way to go, and everyone is already heading that way. By the time IPv4 addresses run out, the biggest difficulty may be explaining to your friends how to fix their internet that is no longer working and they don't know why.

Re:

[idiotnot]

The IPv6 designers made a terrible mistake by not including backward compatibility with IPv4.

How, praytell, would they have gone about doing that?

IPv6 is a lot like Intel's Itanium processor. It's unclear right now whether the the anointed successor will gain ground or whether some IPv4 extension hack will come along and make fools of the IPv6 crowd. (Wait, what's the opposite of "crowd"?) BTW, I'm using a x86_64 processor right now, like most people.

Sorry. Try again. The first Itaniums had IA-32 compatib

Re:

[Kymermosst]

And what makes you think ISPs won't charge per IP address on IPv6?

Well, by the current standards residential assignments in IPv6 will generally be allocated a subnet size of /48, /56, or /64 (out of 128) - see here [getipv6.info] for ARIN address plan. Given the fact that a subnet of one of those sizes will be required for even basic connectivity, the chances are that you will have a lot of v6 IPs included in the basic cost of your connection.

I have IPv6 at home and have a /48 allocation.

Re:

[delinear]

It goes hand in hand with our doing nothing about global warming policy (the hope being once that kicks in it'll reduce the populace and free up some IPs). Stay the course.

Re:

[fulldecent]

It goes hand in hand with our doing nothing about global warming policy (the hope being once that kicks in it'll reduce the populace and free up some IPs). Stay the course.

You have accurately compared responses to IPv4 and global warming: listen to underlings rabble about pseudoscience, find out that no problem exists, move on to next problem.

Re:

[prandal]

So the question we each need to ask, on behalf of ourselves and our employers, is how long will it take to transition my/our setup to IPV6?

If the answer is greater than 2 years, it would be prudent to start doing something about it now.

Re:

[Sancho]

Except that if you read between the lines, this is all a subtle stab at the 2 year estimate. "A couple of years ago" we were slated to run out of addresses by 2010. Now they're estimating 2 more years.

We're bound to eventually run out, and it's probably going to be cheaper to start getting IPv6 out there now rather than at crunch time. But there's a lot that can be done to stretch out the IPv4 address space. I predict that we'll see major ISPs using NAT (and offering upgrades to real IP addresses for ex

Re:

[Guspaz]

And let's not forget the possibility of forced re-allocations of class As.

For example, does the Ford Motor Company really need sixteen million IP addresses? Take them back, make Ford go through ARIN. The US military has about 151 million addresses too...

I'd like to say that no single entity should own an entire class A block, and that they should be forced to go through normal allocation channels.

There's a precedent for this. Stanford voluntarily returned their class A to help relieve the IP crunch. Clearly

Re:

[Bert64]

You can use IPv6 and IPv4 at the same time, for instance one of my sites:

www.ev4.org has address 213.165.238.250
www.ev4.org has IPv6 address 2001:bd0:100:0:1::3

The ipv4 address is shared (http/1.1 virtual hosting), but the ipv6 address is dedicated to that one site.

The US government requires that any routing equipment must *support* ipv6, but not that it be used...

We need governments, the ip registries and domain registries etc (basically anyone in a position to do so) to require that any internet accessibl

Re:

[shentino]

To get v6 internet, you need cooperation all the way up to the tier 1 providers. If even one of them isn't playing ball, the chain breaks.

The first thing that needs to happen for v6 to prosper is for v4 to suffer.

Re:

[shentino]

I think the reason that v4's are being used slowly is because now everyoe knows that they are scarce and are being conservative, and the people who grabbed the most of them back when they were being given away will find their holdings quite valuable.

Just like china's recent move to lock in their rare earth supplies, companies that are sitting on piles of v4's will get VERY stingy with them and ensure a steady supply of them at OPEC level premiums.

Reduced demand and reduced supply rate will ensure that the v

Re:

[omnichad]

coal, Y2k38 bug, exhaustion of hydrogen in the sun, universe expansion...

Trends

[mrpacmanjel]

"...At our current trend rate we've got about 625 days before we will not have new IPv4 addresses available..."

I think this:http://www.xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com] sums it up

Re:Trends

[A beautiful mind]

No, this sums [potaroo.net] it up. If you'd bother to read this or an estimation done by someone else, then you'd know that the uncertainty is less than 3 months with high confidence. Of course the 625 days thing is bullshit, but saying 1.5 years +-3 months is probably what will happen, unless something really major changes don't start happening in the IPv4 process, which I wouldn't say is too likely based on the fact that it would require immediate global cooperation (see how well that went in Copenhagen).

Re:Trends (625 days vs 1.5 years +/- 3 mo)

[jcurran]

You're correct... I'm careful to point out the uncertainty when doing the interviews, but reporters tend to lock onto the IPv4 depletion countdown number regardless...

Re:

[FireFury03]

No, this sums [potaroo.net] it up. If you'd bother to read this or an estimation done by someone else, then you'd know that the uncertainty is less than 3 months with high confidence.

"Given the skewed nature of the distribution of allocations it is difficult to be any more precise than this and although the mathematical model may claim today that exhaustion will occur at 10:32 am on the 14th of June 2011, the range of uncertainty in such a prediction spans years rather than seconds. [potaroo.net]"

One thing is certain though - we _will_ run out of IPv4 addresses soon. It doesn't much matter how soon at this point - it's soon enough that people should be seriously thinking about implementing IPv6 netw

Re:

[A beautiful mind]

Note, the statement that I made and the statement about the model by the author almost a year ago, is not contradictory. I wouldn't disagree that the uncertainty is years, as there is a small chance of a more than few months' worth of swing.

Nope

[Cyberax]

No.

Model which is used to predict the time when IPv4 addresses run out is actually quite good. See here: http://www.inetcore.com/project/ipv4ec/index_en.html [inetcore.com]

Re:

[A beautiful mind]

Way to summarize a few decades' worth of work by hundreds of scientists. If that's your standard of proof, then I assume you wake up every morning and start your computing project with 2 tons of sand, because you just can't trust the hardware and software makers. I see that you're posting, so you must be really smart and hardworking too...

Re:

[A beautiful mind]

Fuck, how did you know it was me [dailymail.co.uk]?!

Re:

[paiute]

Real scientists have a very different opinion on the subject of AGW.

As do true Scotmen.

Re:

[tsa]

Yes yes, we know it already. All climate specialists are crackpots who only serve their own agenda. Can we please stop about global warming here on /.?

Re:

[Pinky's Brain]

Not unless ICANN changes the existing policies to allow resale of assignments and gradual increases of costs of assignments as the pool of unassigned addresses gets smaller.

At the moment there is no market.

I genuinely wish they would just give it all away.

[kieran]

We'll never be able to justify the cost of implementing IPv6 properly until it becomes something customers are demanding, and that won't happen until there is stuff on the Internet people want that to reach couldn't get hold of an IPv4 address.

Still, I suppose I just have to be patient.

Re:

[Pinky's Brain]

We need more ipv6 only torrents.

Whats the point? A three year old estimate is off

[Troy Roberts]

Big F...ing deal! How many predictions are accurate for three or more years? The original prediction was made in May, 2007 and current prediction has slipped the date from December 2, 2010 to November 18, 2012 not quite a 2 years. I challenge anyone to find accurate predictions that are 3 1/2 years old.

We need to be moving to IPV6 as quickly as possible. We may have a bit longer than was predicted 3 1/2 years ago. The thing that is scary is have we made much progress in moving to IPV6 in the last 3 1/2 year? I think not much. So, whatever the actual exhaustion dates are for IPV4 address. We can be certain that we are 3 1/2 years closer than we were and we have done almost nothing to prepare.

Not entirely true

[macemoneta]

That's the point at which IANA is no longer the one handing out addresses. It's also the point at which the market for IP addresses opens, and companies start selling subnets.

There aren't 4.3 billion Internet facing IP addresses. The bulk are held and used internally by companies (for no good reason). People complain about NAT all the time, but it works. How many Internet facing IP addresses are used by Google's quarter million servers?

$ host google.com
google.com has address 64.233.169.104
google.com has

Re:

[fbjon]

You mean NAT solves more problems than it causes? I don't buy that for a second.

Re:Not entirely true

[A beautiful mind]

It's also the point at which the market for IP addresses opens, and companies start selling subnets.

No. Repeat after me, there is no market in IPv4 addresses. The current rule is that when a RIR requests a block from IANA that would bring the IANA pool below 5 /8s, then every RIR gets one last /8 from the "final five". Then IANA is done and the RIRs have whatever addresses they have left in their unused pool. For AfrNIC it'll last decades, for APNIC/ARIN it's curtains in about a year.

There is no market in IPv4. There never will be, because reclaiming addresses is too hard and routing can't handle it atm (routing too small blocks). Let's switch to IPv6 already, for fuck's sake, we'll have to do that anyway even if a miracle happens, technical problems get worked out and someone sets up an IPv4 market, about 6 months after.

Re:

[sarhjinian]

Repeat after me, there is no market in IPv4 addresses.

Tell that to the people who were calling my former employer, offering to buy portions of their /16 for substantial amounts of money.

Re:

[A beautiful mind]

Ok, let's say your former employer would have agreed. How would he assign the addresses to the buyer? How would he claim the money for the financial transaction without pissing off the $government of the country?

Re:

[Dirtside]

then every RIR gets one last /8 from the "final five"

And if BSG taught us anything, it's that the final five won't be who you expect!

Re:

[bbn]

$ host google.com
google.com has address 74.125.43.104
google.com has address 74.125.43.105
google.com has address 74.125.43.147
google.com has address 74.125.43.103
google.com has address 74.125.43.99
google.com has address 74.125.43.106

Looks like Google just had you.

Re:

[corsec67]

And, Google definitely has geographic distribution, where near Nagoya, Japan, that is:

$ host google.com
google.com has address 66.249.89.103
google.com has address 66.249.89.99
google.com has address 66.249.89.104
google.com has address 66.249.89.147

Interesting how the last bytes of the list I got are included in the list you got...

My ping to those servers is under 10ms, as well.

World endsz in 2012 anyway

[nedlohs]

So it's all good.

Seriously random calendar rolling over, IPv4 addresses running out. At the same time! Proof that Jesus is coming back in 2012!?!

Re:World endsz in 2012 anyway

[jellomizer]

Will his website be at address 255.255.255.254?

Guess we'll just going to have to have...

[A beautiful mind]

...another financial crisis. Because that's the reason there was a slump in allocation rates. The current best projection for IANA pool exhaustion is Sep/Oct 2011 [potaroo.net]. Without the financial crisis that would have been end of 2010. The IANA guys would have been dead on, if not for a once in a 100 years financial event.

The tone of the submission is really silly. There wasn't 4.3B allocatable addresses in the first place. Out of the 256 "/8s" only 219.914 /8 is theoretically usable, even before subtracting the legacy allocations. The summary makes it sound like it was a doom-and-gloom prediction that didn't happen to be true, but that's not the case.

Also, it's "not the next 2 or 3 years", based on the available number of addresses 1.5 years for the IANA pool and 2,5 years are hard bars until RIRs (regional internet registries) run out.

Re:

[dunezone]

Its been 1.5 to 2.5 years for the past 6 years.

Re:

[A beautiful mind]

[citation needed]

Re:

[noidentity]

I'm not following how we'll run out. IP addresses are sort of like gold; they never get consumed, just used for a while, then perhaps sold to someone else. Even if the current allocator of IP addresses runs empty, there will still be the owners of the 4.3 billion addresses out there. I'm also guessing that the current seller has some sort of fixed price, which tends to suppress the natural market signal of a higher price that tells others that they're scarce and not to buy them unless they are really needed

The adaptation of IPv6 will free IPv4 addresses

[SlOrbA]

I predict that 2012 we will still have available IPv4 addresses.

This will happen because some IPv4 addresses will be reallocated as client-side doesn't need IPv4 addresses in IPv6 to access IPv4 resources. So IPv6 adaptation it self will slow the need to migrate to IPv6 as singular Internet Protocol.

Re:

[bbn]

This will happen because some IPv4 addresses will be reallocated as client-side doesn't need IPv4 addresses in IPv6 to access IPv4 resources.

This is wrong. You do need an IPv4 address to access IPv4 resources.

There is no IPv6 to IPv4 "NAT" technology that has not been deprecated.

So likely we will all have dual stack IP connectivity, with a global unique IPv6 address and a local IPv4 address that will be NAT'ed at the ISP level.

Re:

[TheRaven64]

You need an IPv4 address, but it can be NAT'd if all you are doing is accessing IPv4 resources. That means that ISPs can NAT their customers (so their computers will be double-NAT'd) for IPv4. They can still use IPv4 HTTP / SMTP / whatever, but they won't be able to host anything or run peer-to-peer IPv4 services, which should provide a lot of incentive for them to start using IPv6 (which will Just Work if both ends have v6 connectivity) for as much as possible.

Re:

[Abcd1234]

They can still use IPv4 HTTP / SMTP / whatever, but they won't be able to host anything or run peer-to-peer IPv4 services, which should provide a lot of incentive for them to start using IPv6 (which will Just Work if both ends have v6 connectivity) for as much as possible.

Wait, what? I can only assume the "them" in "incentive for them" must refer to the customer, because it certainly doesn't apply to the ISPs. What you just described is a great reason for ISPs to *not* provide IPv4. I can see it now: "S

STUPID

[mc1138]

Whether or not the issue will be forced, the problem is that for most of the developing world they already are either running out or pretty damn close. Because of this, if the US doesn't jump on the band wagon we will continue to be outpaced by countries like China that are already neck deep in rolling out IPv6. This isn't a matter of when, just if, and really ought to be done gradually, but quickly, rather than wait till a moment to be forced. I encourage anyone that can to move as quick as they can towards this rather than sit and wait and watch the world pass them by.

Nortel's class A?

[Fractal Dice]

Doesn't Nortel have an entire class A network (47.x.x.x) to itself? Having that returned to the pool after the death roll is complete should presumably buy a little time?

(I guess that falls into the "On the other hand, ARIN is also having some success in reclaiming unused IPv4 address space back from organizations that aren't using all of their addresses." line from the article?)

Re:

[A beautiful mind]

Reclaiming all the legacy IP addresses would buy us 6 months tops. So we delayed the problem by 6 months, during which we would be fucking up the DoD, IBM and a handful of other companies, I'm sure it'd be worth it, it's not like the military would be fighting somewhere and they could pull off a massive networking restructure in less than a year for the 8 /8s they're holding on to.

In other news....

[idiotnot]

IPX won't die in 2010, either.

But, in all seriousness, there's a few things to remember here.
1. The v4 address space will be exhausted in the foreseeable future.
2. Reclaiming large blocks only delays that inevitability by a few months.
3. With a few exceptions, modern, supported OSes (Windows [2003, 2008, Vista, 7], GNU/Linux, all of the BSDs, OS X) support IPv6 perfectly.
4. Most of the critical applications support IPv6 perfectly.
5. The big holdup on the consumer side has been with the ISPs. The DOCSIS 3.0 roll-out is ongoing in many places.
6. The US government has mandated it. The compliance date was in 2008 for all of the Federal agencies on their backbones. It's just a matter now of getting ISP access to those sites, and configuring lower-level systems.

The luddite attitude here about this is amazing. If you're really all that concerned about it, and don't want to focus too much on the nuts-and-bolts, here's some advice: Learn BIND. Setting up your resolvers properly will spare you headaches.

I use IPv6 every day. I get lots of e-mail over IPv6 (netbsd and freebsd mailing lists, to name just a couple). I enjoy being able to ssh to all of my machines at home directly. It's here. Evaluate your crap, and see what's not going to work. Plan to replace that stuff. Most of it probably will need replacing by the time you get assigned a /64 or /48 by your ISP, anyway. This isn't rocket science. /rant

Re:

[JasterBobaMereel]

The answer to this is that too many people have tried to setup IPv6 and have run into problems and reverted back to IPv4 (Thank you Microsoft!)

Once burnt twice shy ... we'll wait until it is easy to setup (or default) ... why is is not the default on all new systems?

Re:

[idiotnot]

IPv6 was a PITA on 2000 and XP. It is the default protocol on Vista, 2008, and 7. In fact, one of the original bugs in Exchange 2007 was that you couldn't install it *without* IPv6 being enabled on your public interface.

But, I disagree with your contention that bad experiences are why people shy away from it. I think for more people, it's the nastiness of the stateless addresses. "But I can remember 192.168.0.1 in my head!" Yeah, and you can remember the four numbers in your /64 prefix, too. You're ju

Re:

[Abcd1234]

But, I disagree with your contention that bad experiences are why people shy away from it. I think for more people, it's the nastiness of the stateless addresses.

Nah, frankly, most people shy away from it because they just don't see the benefit that makes the trouble with it. And I'm one of them. I could, this weekend, get myself an ipv6 allocation from hurricane or a similar provider, configure my firewall appropriately, reconfig the few boxes on my network, and voila, have ipv6 deployed. But then what?

Re:

[dkf]

It's fundamentally a chicken-and-egg problem. Until ipv6 starts getting deployed, it's useless. But until ipv6 appears useful, it won't get deployed. It sucks, but that's the simple reality of the situation.

That's why governments are pushing it; to get things from one meta-stable state to another (hopefully more stable) one.

2012?

[Xacid]

Maybe THIS is the end of the world everyone's talking about...

killer app

[jmyers]

For ipv6 to get widespread use there has to be a killer app that people (businesses or consumers) want or think they must have. I don't mean what geeks want or think they must have. The masses of sheeple are perfectly happy if everything is NAT'd.

I have no idea what this app may be, but it could be some cloud service that everyone wants and is only made available via ipv6 technology. Customers will demand that ISPs support it so they can use the product.

migration away from ipv4 for strictly technical reason

Again?

[jimpop]

no, really? AGAIN?

Yet another RGA from CmdrTaco

[FlyingGuy]

Pfffft!

an honest question:

[circletimessquare]

speaking honestly from a position of ignorance on the issue: is there anything about the ipv6 spec that lends itself better to censorship and control? in other words, could china or iran do their authoritarian bullshit easier with ipv6 than with ipv4?

depending upon the answer, i will either support ipv6 adaptation, or fight giving up ipv4 until the bitter end

if ipv6 really makes you more trackable

[circletimessquare]

then fuck ipv6

and welcome to the age of subnets

So what's the satus...

[HaZardman27]

...of deploying IPv6? Two years isn't that much time, and I haven't heard much of when IPv6 will be the new standard.

How long until /. is IPv6?

[wowbagger]

Once again, I'll ask a simple question:

How long until it is possible to pull up the main page on Slashdot, using nothing but IPv6 packets?

IMHO, every time one of these "OMFG IPv4 gonna run out RSN!!!1!11!" stores hits the front page, the Slashcrew should have to state where THEY are in becoming IPv6, and what is preventing them from doing so already.

Re:What about the domain parking, tasting, sniping

[Kufat]

Domain squatters and the like use one IP (and one server) for thousands and thousands of domains. They're parasites but they're not using anything like a significant fraction of the available IP space.

Re:

[gandhi_2]

lern 2 internets [apache.org]

Re:What about the domain parking, tasting, sniping

[me at werk]

Thanks to Apache and the miracle of Virtual Servers, one can use one IPv4 address to host thousands of domains! This depends on HTTP1.1, though, and old browsers can't handle it, but nobody cares about them.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name#Use_in_web_site_hosting [wikipedia.org]

In conclusion, your argument is invalid.

Re:

[gclef]

If you'd read the Domain Tasting wiki article [wikipedia.org] rather that just ranting, you would have found the following:

ICANN reported in August 2009, that prior to implementing excess domain deletion charges, the peak month for domain tastings was over 15 million domain names. After the $0.20 fee was implemented, this dropped to around 2 million domain names per month. As a result of the further increase in charges for excess domain deletions, implemented starting April 2009, the number of domain tastings dropped to b

Re:

[Bigbutt]

I have 12 domains on one IP. Not to say that the different squatters aren't using a bunch though.

Better would be to pull back IPs from the folks who don't need them.

What about that block that the Ham Radio guys had out in San Francisco that was hijacked by the spammers? Or the companies and governments that have thousands of unused IPs? I used to work at one government place (contractor) and we had a large chunk for our site with about 2,000 employees.

Where I work, we have 1,200 people in the company and we

Re:Could last another 10 years...

[EyelessFade]

Nothing new there. The university I work at have a /16 network. Everything has its own ip, even projectors. And by God thats how its supposed to work

Re:

[Rolgar]

That might well be, but there is over 2 billion addresses located in 126 privately held networks that don't need to be. How many of these [wikipedia.org] organizations are using even 1% of the IP addresses at their disposal? Give them 5 class B's of their choice from their current class A, and reclaim the rest, then this issue will go away for a long time.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Give them 5 class B's of their choice from their current class A, and reclaim the rest, then this issue will go away for a long time.

No, it won't. The equivalent of one class A net of IP addresses gets assigned every 28 days. It would buy a few months and the resources are better invested in the transition to IPv6.

Re:

[Bigjeff5]

126 * 28 days = 3,528 days, or just over 9 years, and that's only by re-allocating wasteful Class A's currently in use.

9 years is a lot more than a few months.

That's also the problem with these extrapolations, because as the addresses become more scarce the assignment rate slows down. When IPv4 addresses were first being handed out, they were given at a rate of 5-10 Class A's a week. We're down to one a month now, in a year it will be one Class A every two months, if that.

It would buy a few months and the resources are better invested in the transition to IPv6.

You're obviously not very good at

Re:

[A beautiful mind]

128? The legacy address space is 57 /8s [iana.org], and at least 25 of that by my count is already "reclaimed" or reserved for some purpose. A good chunk of the remaining 22 /8s is in use, so let's say we can get half of that reclaimed in the ideal case. That's 11 /8s. We used up 13 /8s last year, so it'd last us 10 months. It would take longer to reclaim that space than it would help us pushing out the due date of IPv4 exhaustion.

When IPv4 addresses were first being handed out, they were given at a rate of 5-10 Class

Re:

[sean.peters]

That's also the problem with these extrapolations, because as the addresses become more scarce the assignment rate slows down.

Yeah, that's why this whole "peak oil" thing is bogus - because of course as we run out of oil, our rate of using it will go down!

...

You see the problem, right? At some point we're going to start feeling some pain - we'll be foregoing the use of an IP address that we could really put to productive use - but we can't because getting one is too difficult/expensive. The point is that y

Re:

[FlyingBishop]

The projector is mounted on the ceiling, and your laptop is on your desk. You wirelessly hook up the projector as an external monitor.

You're in a lab, and your media server is in your room. You hook up and start streaming music. The possibilities are endless.

All sorts of things Just Work so much better with ipv6.

Re:

[FrostedWheat]

Having live IP addresses is the way it should be done. NAT offers no more security than a simple firewall in this case.

Re:

[geekmux]

Having live IP addresses is the way it should be done. NAT offers no more security than a simple firewall in this case.

Ah, no, having live IP addresses is the way it was done, back before viruses, trojans, 10,000-node botnets, and Microsoft got involved. That "simple" firewall you speak of is now absolutely mandatory for damn near any business or home today.

Trying to run the Internet "traditionally" on a 30-year old protocol is like trying to drive a Model-T on the freeway. Neither of the original designers ever envisioned what the future would bring.

And yes, I realize that IPv6 design will help eradicate NAT, and get it

Re:

[fbjon]

I found my college campus computer lab has all of their workstations on the live Internet.

Congratulations for describing exactly how the Internet should be. It's also not a security nightmare at all, it's SOP.

Re:Could last another 10 years...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

...if we actually went after those who currently hold "monster" /8 and even /16 blocks that aren't doing squat (pun intended) with them.

When the IPv4 addresses run out, those "monster" holders will be doing something with them. Selling them.

The "monster" holders are big IT players, and they would never give away something that they see could be a valuable asset in the future.

Go knock at HP's door, with a bowl in your hand, and say: "Please, Sir, can I have some more IPv4 addresses?"

"More? You want MORE!"

Re:

[Pinky's Brain]

They can't sell em, at best they can go into the ISP business with them.

Re:

[u38cg]

I think the position will change, but only after some kicking and screaming. As for unused allocations, even if all these were freed up, it would only provide a few more months of capacity, so the debate over what to do with them is really moot.

Re:Increase in domain value?

[petermgreen]

why can't all little-visited domains be on virtual hosts and share their IP address with many others?
Many can but as of right now if you want to use ssl/tls you pretty much need your own IP.

with ssl/tls the server does not have the http request at the time the connection is negotiated and certificates checked so it can't use the name from it to decide what certificate to present.

You can in principle have multiple domains on one certificate but it makes the certificate management far more of an administrative PITA (essentially the host would have to apply for a certificate on behalf of all the domains they host on an ip and get a new one every time a domain needed to be moved between machines)

There is a ssl/tls extention which tells the server which domain is being requested during the ssl handshake so it can send out different certificates for different domains. Unfortunately the built in ssl support in xp doesn't support it (both IE and chrome use the windows built in ssl support, firefox doesn't).

Re:

[gmack]

What are are talking about is called Server Name Indication (SNI). Apache's mod_SSL has only recently started supporting it so older Linux distros don't support it yet on the server side either.

Re:

[shentino]

This used to be a big reason for the need for many v4 addresses.

Nowadays with HTTP/1.1, you have to make the host explicit in your request, and failure to specify is not optional.

It does require a modern web server to handle things properly.

Re:

[jack2000]

Yeah if only there was a way to assign names to these hard to remember numbers, universal names that anyone can use to get to that exact ip address that they wanted. Dumb people will use the name system all the time!
OH I KNOW! We'll name it DUMB NAME SYSTEM! DNS for short!

Re:2012

[petermgreen]

Yes there are a lot of ipv6 addresses, however looking at the total size of a 128 bit address space is very misleading as ipv6 addresses are designed to be allocated in a more heirachical manner and designed to support stateless autoconfiguration for clients. Originally end sites were meant to be allocated a /48 though ripe now seems to be pushing for smaller allocations to smaller end sites.

Plus only 2::/3 is assigned to the ipv6 internet with other address space being reserved for other purposes.

Those figures would give us 2^45 end sites, this should be enough that we don't run out of addresses any time soon but it's a lot less than the ammount people assume from just looking at the number of bits in the IP.