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The Internet Networking

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.'"
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Last Available IPv4 Blocks Allocated

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  • Egypt ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 31, 2011 @10:15PM (#35063564)

    Egypt has just given up theirs ...

    • by 228e2 ( 934443 )
      Not given up, just a gag order on all internet activity.
    • by Genda ( 560240 )

      Awww! but they all smell like camel...

      Apparently IPv4 blocks are not like Doritos!

    • by Troll-Under-D'Bridge ( 1782952 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @10:33PM (#35063674) Journal

      Hi, I'm General Tutan Khamun. As commander of the Royal Camel Battalion, I was in charge of the valuable ancient artifacts of the Arab Republic of Egypt. However because of ongoing chaos in the country, numerous treasures have been lost. For a small fee, you can help me recover these artifacts and return them to their rightful owners. Please send me your contact detail$$$ and I will call you back.

      May Pharaoh be with you!

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        No, no, it's:

        Hi, I'm General Tutan Khamun. As commander of the Royal Camel Battalion, I was in charge of paying the families of military dead in the Arab Republic of Egypt. However because of ongoing chaos in the country, numerous records have lost, and many dead have no recorded heir. Therefore, the payouts to families are large.

        We need a person outside Egypt to serve as an intermediary to help transfer funds to heirs in the United States. In exchange for your help, we will pay you the some of TEN MIL

      • Mrs. Frederic called. She says you were not supposed to divulge any information on Warehouse 2.

  • by Spazmania ( 174582 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @10:19PM (#35063596) Homepage

    triggering ARIN's final distribution of blocks to the RIRs

    I think you mean triggering IANA's final distribution. ARIN is one of the 5 RIRs who will receive a final /8 from IANA.

  • by Howitzer86 ( 964585 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @10:23PM (#35063632)
    I seem to have failed an online IPv6 test [test-ipv6.com]. Should I be worried?
    • Whether you should be worried depends on what you use your internet connection for.

      If you only use it for conventional client stuff you shouldn't worry too much, I would expect important services to remain available on IPV4 for a long time. On the other hand if you do stuff that relies on incoming connections you should be aware that at some point your IPV4 service may be put behind ISP level NAT to free up IPv4 addresses for more important uses (though comcast is in a better position than most on this beca

    • by SheeEttin ( 899897 ) <sheeettin&gmail,com> on Monday January 31, 2011 @10:38PM (#35063716) Homepage
      Not yet, Comcast is currently trialling IPv6 in select locations (i.e. San Francisco, NYC, Boston, etc.). They expect to roll out IPv6 to the rest of us some time this year. (You can keep up with their progress here [comcast6.net].)

      Meanwhile, if you really want IPv6 for whatever reason, I set up a tunnel with Hurricane Electric. After configuring my computers and router (DD-WRT, IPv6 is fully supported), I had IPv6 both internally and externally (i.e. IPv6 DHCP and access to the IPv6 Internet). You can set your own up here [tunnelbroker.net].
      (I took it down shortly afterward, because I don't know about any security ramifications this would have.)
      • i.e. IPv6 DHCP

        Why did you go with DHCP rather than the simpler, faster and cooler stateless autoconfig with radvd?

        I took it down shortly afterward, because I don't know about any security ramifications this would have

        None, assuming you set up a firewall to block incoming IPv6 connections.

    • If you got 7/10 on IPv4, all is ok. The explanation says it clearly that no problems are expected for you when AAAA records will start being published, as your system will gracefully ignore them.

      Even with fully working IPv6 you may get less than the max if your DNS server isn't fully up to scratch, like Google's 8.8.8.8.

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      Have you set up to use Comcast's 6to4 or 6rd tunnel service? I am on Comcast with 6rd set up and I get 9/10 (only warning is that Comcast DNS isn't on v6 yet).

      Have a look here [comcast6.net] for 6rd instructions. Otherwise, set up 6to4 using 192.88.99.1.

    • Don't worry, you're on Comcast. You have enough problems without worrying about IPv4 vs v6 as it is.

    • by rdebath ( 884132 )
      I've got 10/10 for both IPv4 and IPv6 using firefox with adblock and NoScript. I get some complaints unless I unblock them from NoScript but I still get 10/10.
  • by killmenow ( 184444 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @10:27PM (#35063654)
    Hey, has anybody said anything witty about Egypt yet?

    Remember, I said witty.
    • by jon3k ( 691256 )
      Nope, just the same joke about half a dozen times (out of about 10 posts)
      • Well, I did check to see if anybody else had posted that joke, but then I had to log in again to actually post.

        What is with this new Slashdot always logging me out? It seems that the cookie has changed or isn't enough to do the job.

        I set Firefox to junk all cookies when I close the browser, then whitelisted the Slashdot cookies. This worked nicely for years. I can no longer even find the button to whitelist a cookie; probably a Firefox "upgrade" got rid of it to make the UI "easier" to use...???

    • How many IP 4 blocks do you think Egypt does not need anymore? That ought to help us out for awhile.

  • "final distribution of five /8 blocks"

    If I've said it once I've said it a thousand times.

    You do NOT talk about the final five!

  • by metalmaster ( 1005171 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @10:54PM (#35063794)

    IPv6 or Duke Nukem Forever?

    The race to the consumer roll out is on!

    • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      IPv6 or Duke Nukem Forever?

      I've got IPv6 running on my Mac right now. OTOH, I looked on the App Store, and didn't see Duke Nukem Forever available for download. :^(

      • Current operating systems support IPv6, but consumer grade routers and a few ISP's havent jumped on the bandwagon yet
        • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

          Current operating systems support IPv6, but consumer grade routers and a few ISP's havent jumped on the bandwagon yet

          All very true, but unlike DNF, the code for IPv6 definitely exists and definitely works. It's just (haha!) a matter of actually installing it in the places it needs to be installed.

  • Damn it! I just figured out how to subnet without a calculator and now this!!
  • I can't undertand why we can't ask legacy holders to give some accounting for their space usage. Take the US Postal Service, for example. Give each of the estimated 43,000 ZIP codes out there its own IP address, and that won't even fill a /16. And yet they have 56/8? Surely they don't need that much. Is there language in these old distributions that prevents the possibility of them being audited and revoked? And even if we don't go after mismanaged /8 space, registries certainly have an obligation to go aft

    • by seifried ( 12921 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @11:26PM (#35063956) Homepage
      For every /8 you manage to claw back (incurring ridiculous costs to the holders of it, meaning it won't happen, they'd sooner take IANA/ARIN/etc. to court and drag it out I suspect) you gain.. wait for it... a total of 1 month. It's just not worth it. And then what.. start clawing back class B's? Better to move to IPv6 and just fix it for once and all. Plus we still have the 6to4, 4to6 and whatnot to deal with for a few decades.
    • by Cimexus ( 1355033 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @11:28PM (#35063968)

      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.

    • by Greyfox ( 87712 )
      IBM owns nine-dot. That's a class A, bitches, 16M IP addresses for their 250K-some-odd users. They don't even use nine-dot for their external web presence. They can't give it back though, since they don't know exactly where 9.1.1.2 is, and the entire company will collapse if that computer goes offline. True story bro!
  • by dhammabum ( 190105 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @11:16PM (#35063900)

    I note that IANA has classified 240/8 - 255/8 (well 254/8 really - 255 is for broadcasts) as reserved for future use. Is not the future now?

    • Re:240/4 subnets (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ravenspear ( 756059 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @11:23PM (#35063930)

      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.

      • Isn't it a bit idiotic to hard code refusal to route addresses reserved for "future use"?

        The firmware developers should have expected the "future" would come eventually right?

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by ravenspear ( 756059 )

          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:240/4 subnets (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @01:54AM (#35064710) Homepage

            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.

        • Isn't it a bit idiotic to hard code refusal to route addresses reserved for "future use"?

          The firmware developers should have expected the "future" would come eventually right?

          How should developers have designed the use of that address space? Unicast? Multicast? Anycast? Some-as-yet-unknown-cast? Kind of hard to program that in and for what benefit? Zero return really and one might argue for a net loss as some vendors may have designed its use one way and others may have done something altogether different and incompatible with the first. Then what? Not it's totally screwed up. Not to mention if it's not used but enabled for years and years I bet there would be bugs galore since

    • Re:240/4 subnets (Score:4, Informative)

      by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Monday January 31, 2011 @11:25PM (#35063946)

      Except that a good deal of devices refuse to route anything to such addresses, making them effectively useless. Having to reflash every router (including "consumer" ones) and fix every broken config would be harder than just migrating to IPv6. Strictly speaking, easier to amend but with breakages harder to spot.

    • Is not the future now?

      No. Not ever. By definition.

      Buy an IPv6 router. Or a time machine. Or an IPv6 time machine.

    • by rdebath ( 884132 )

      You run MS windows right ?

      You will not connect to anything in the 240.0 to 255.0 address range, windows will error. Windows isn't the only one.

      Plus at the current burn rate 16 /8s will last just seven months...

      Some of the mobile operators are getting close to the stage where they need an entire IPv4 internet just for their devices and there are already more devices connected to the internet than there are addresses.

  • Going to update http://xkcd.com/195/ [xkcd.com] ?

  • by c0lo ( 1497653 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @12:28AM (#35064278)
    "A strong CIDR please, I'm exhausted"
    • A good laugh... :)
      Mod parent up, please!
      10 years ago, this would already be up thru the clouds. What's happened?!

  • ... and they told me, quite plainly, that they have absolutely no intention to start deploying IPv6 address blocks to customers until they run completely out of IPv4 addresses.

    I was floored. "Until"??? That's like not bothering to buy toilet paper until you need to use the restroom *after* you've already run out.

    • Which ISP please so I know who to avoid?
    • ... and they told me, quite plainly, that they have absolutely no intention to start deploying IPv6 address blocks to customers until they run completely out of IPv4 addresses.

      I was floored. "Until"??? That's like not bothering to buy toilet paper until you need to use the restroom *after* you've already run out.

      That's probably reasonable. There are a number of ways to address IPv4/6 interoperability.

      • by mark-t ( 151149 )
        Of course, but if they offered customers the option of IP6 address blocks to those who wanted it now, while the option still exists to also have an available IPv4 address to use as a backup, then customers could then have time to actually verify that their new IPv6 systems are working properly before finally releasing their IPv4 address completely.
    • That's about on-par with my experiences.

      Previous ISP (TeliaSonera) told me that they gave out IPv6 blocks for free to business customers but refused to do so for residental customers except for their "tester" customers (and they didn't want more of those).

      Switched to Bahnhof a while back and as great as they are they can't offer native IPv6 access where I live because the open citynet I get their connection through (city owns the last mile and the ISPs hook into the city's network for a small fee per subscr

    • no one answering the phone at an isp knows what their internal plans are.

  • If anyone from google is reading this please consider preferencing sites with A and AAAA records in your search results or heck just threaten/rumor to do it.

  • Just to put the rates into perspective ...

    APNIC -- Asia Pacific region, have just been allocated 2 more /8's, once the final distribution is done they will have just under 6 free /8's allocated to them. This is expected to last until September ... THIS Year.

    The current 'burn rate' of /8 for the world is about one every two weeks. Whatever happens IPv4 is running out of addresses RIGHT NOW and it will mean that ISPs will be running out before the end of 2012, some of them by the end of this year.

    The M

  • by Epsillon ( 608775 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @07:53AM (#35066386) Journal
    ...to post this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y36fG2Oba0 [youtube.com]

Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. -- Steinbach

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