US Shrugs Off World's IP Address Shortage

Clifton Griffin writes "C|Net has an article stating that the U.S. isn't making the push for IPv6 like others are even though the networking appliances and operating systems are ready for it. It goes on to explain that North America has 70% of the Internet address space and that there is a total of 1 billion IPs left, which may sound like a lot but considering we now have Internet-enabled cellphones and VoIP, it really isn't."

Comments

Change

[Evanrude]

Americans Fear Change...
Have you ever actually seen an IPv6 Address?? No more memorizing IP addresses!

Re:Change

[Mengoxon]

I fear the American's fear... and all its consequences

Re:Change

[garcia]

too bad IPv6 doesn't have DNS eh? Oh wait, it does.

Re:Change

[jeremyp]

An IPv6 address is a sequence of 8 16 bit numbers. It's usually written in hex with the numbers separated by colons e.g:

1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A

Apparently IPv4 only nodes are represented in the IPv6 space with the first 6 numbers being

0:0:0:0:0:FFFF

and the last two numbers containing the IPv4 address e.g.
10.1.2.3 would be

0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:A:1:2:3

and may also be written as

0:0:0:0:0:FFFF:10.1.2.3

Shrug

[inertia187]

I wish I had a dime for every IP assigned to (and released from) my devices. God Bless America! />

Wait a second, 1 billion is a lot of IPs. My web enabled phone has never been assigned an internet accessible IP address, it's on some kind of weird proxy service. My computers at work are on a NAT. So that leaves my computer at home, and it's had that "dynamic" IP assignment for months and months. No wonder we're shrugging it off. Get over it.

Re:Shrug

[subzero_ice]

You may not be using that many public IPs but there are many corporations that own huge chunks regardless. For example some corporations own xxx.xxx.1.1-xxx.xxx.255.255

Re:Shrug

[Pxtl]

Have you tried to do voice chat? Gaming? Serving? Anything other then basic web browsing behind a NAT? NATs seriously reduce the usability of the internet - in many cases, either you forward (thus making it so only one computer behind a NAT of many may serve a certain content) or you don't use that on your computer.

Its sad that there is still no free VOIP client that works consistently behind a NAT (and there are many, many free VOIP clients). Direct P2P file transfers are similarly painful.

Yes, there are solutions, but they're either rare, expensive, hacks, or a combination of the above. Thinking that a NAT is fine just means that you don't do much with your computer.

Re:Shrug

[Some Dumbass...]

Wait a second, 1 billion is a lot of IPs.

It's enough for ~15% of the people on this planet to get 1 more IP.

Re:Shrug

[Vengeful weenie]

It's out, NAT is the ugly evil quasimoto of the Internet! Bwhhha, ha, ha!

(As opposed to the pretty one? :/ )

Re:Shrug

[Lumpy]

Have you tried to do voice chat? Gaming? Serving? Anything other then basic web browsing behind a NAT?

Yes.. I use Creative Voice Blasters with fobbit phone to talk via VoIPtwice a day without a hint of trouble, I play many games online with others.. Q3,wofenstin,Ut2003.. my daughter play's sims online. and we play PLaystations online games all the time (for free might I add.. in your face Xbox Fanboys) I also serve my own web pages and webcams, email server and ssh/sftp..

no hassles at all. and it takes 3 seconds to change the rules in the hardware router/firewall.

anyone having trouble either doesn't have a clue about what they are doing, or has the wrong hardware misconfigured horribly.

Re:Shrug

[mr. methane]

I've operated two major businesses - both with over 2,000 employees - from behind proxy/nat systems. In one case I had a /24 (of which I used precisely four IP's) and in the other case I had a /28 (which was used more completely because of multiple web sites).

I'm using NAT right now, and running VoIP (vonage) flawlessly, gaming with both Xbox and PC (I get fragged a lot, but it's because I'm a mediocre player, ping time ain't a factor). At the same time I'm also using a VPN (so it looks like I have full routing to a corporate network). NAT and DHCP have made home networking so simple that a lot of products require little or no configuration, which means a lot more people can take advantage of them.

IPv6 is a very interesting technology, but there's simply nothing that makes it worth investing time and money for most companies and end-users. When there's some "killer app", that makes it worthwhile to switch to IPv6.... I will take the plunge like everyone else.

I think it's a good idea to make users sit behind a proxy. It reduces security risks for inexperienced users, makes it easier to identify mp3 downloaders, and keeps the terminally clueless from turning on IIS and having their machines owned in 30 seconds flat. NAT, squid, and other technologies pretty much made the address "shortage" a non-issue, by increasing exponentially the efficiency of IP address allocation. A certain famously demanding lady from NSI also deserves some credit, for brow-beating ISP's into being more realistic about address space requests.

Re:Shrug

[jd]

Although IP shortage is the usually quoted reason for IPv6, it's actually the least important.

IPv6 provides the following significant other benefits:

• Mobile IP (shift networks without dropping connections)
  
• Guaranteed IP uniqueness (no kidnapping of IPs or accidental re-allocations is possible)
  
• Faster routing (simpler header structure makes it quicker for routers to process a packet)
  
• Smaller router tables (built-in heirarchical IP structure means you don't need more than the immediate routes in or out)
  
• Automatic configuration for services (anycasting allows you to scan your LAN for all services provided and to configure your network accordingly)
  
• IPSec as standard! Probably one of the most significant improvements.
  
• Source-Specific Multicast as standard
  

The reason the US isn't implementing IPv6 has nothing to do with address space. It has to do with the IPSec and mobility requirements. You can't wiretap an encrypted, variable-path connection so easily. And that puts ISPs and backbone providers at risk from Big Nasty Thugs in the Department of Homeland Insecurity.

Re:Shrug

[crisco]

The problems with NAT and the current crop of applications that assume you're directly connected to the internet don't show up until you have more than one person behind the firewall trying to use the same application.

I've easily reconfigured my firewall/NAT appliance to enable just about every application I've tried. Used this way, I might as well have one IP per computer. But getting multiple computers running the same game or application to connect to the outside world starts to get more difficult. Only a few of the chorus of 'I can make NAT work just fine' mention this hurdle.

For IP4 apps, the fault lies with the programmers. Anyone programming TCP/IP should recognize that their program stands a good chance of being run behind a wide array of firewalls and NAT devices. At the very least, allow the user to configure a port number for the device and don't rely on some tricky sequence of connections on various ports to maintain a connection. Anticiapte more than one copy of your program running from behind a firewall or NAT appliance. Of course, for some applications, this is easier said than done. But the wide number of applications that successfully work with only one public IP address shows that it can be done.

Re:Shrug

[Ancil]

I have 5 routed IP's on my DSL, and I only use one of them anyway. Using NAT and pinholes, I run a web server, mail server, Ventrillo server (the best VoIP ever!), ssh server, etc. Honestly, I've never understood people who want routable IP's for all their machines. NAT isn't just better for the internet, it's better for your network too. I have to specifically enable any incoming traffic, which means I know exactly what traffic is coming through and where it's going.

Re:Shrug

[gad_zuki!]

I want to also chime in on using VPN, vonage, gaming, etc on NAT. Works well enough.

NAT at best is a stop-gap solution. What needs to be done is a smart re-allocation of unused IPv4 addresses. How many does Apple, Microsoft, IBM, MIT, etc have that they will never use in a million years?

One day IPv6 will be here, but we'll need to break up the huge IPv4 blocks fist.

Re:Shrug

[pHDNgell]

I've operated two major businesses - both with over 2,000 employees - from behind proxy/nat systems.

Sure, I'm behind a NAT at work right now. That's part of the reason I can't initiate a video chat with my wife right now. I don't really expect the same freedoms on a work network as I do on a home network, so when they use NAT and it breaks stuff, I don't complain.

I think it's a good idea to make users sit behind a proxy.

NATs and proxies are unrelated. While a NAT might work around not having a proxy for a particular service, it is a completely different tool.

My personal feeling is that no device on a business network should have both direct internet access and access to other business systems. You can proxy HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, RTSP, AIM, and far more things that people probably shouldn't be doing anyway. You can require authentication on most of those things as well.

NAT coming out of a corporate network gives people the freedom to do all kinds of stupid stuff that you don't want done on your network (i.e. ssh -R) while making it very difficult to figure out who did it.

I used to get calls from management telling me that some idiot did something really bad using our corporate network (launched attacks on individuals, leaked confidential information, etc...) and that they want to know who was doing it. Of course, when nothing was going on, I couldn't prevent those types of things because management was afraid that reducing people's freedom to do whatever they felt like doing with company resources would make the workers unhappy.

What is the benefit

[nuggz]

Until there is a benefit, why expend the resources.

If I have enough IP's why should I bother changing.
Actually the other people can take the risk, do the upgrade, solve the problems, then the cost to change is cheaper.
Once the benefit outweighs the cost, people will do it. It just doesn't make sense yet.

of course they are shrugging it off...

[garcia]

ipv6 (or a similar technology) will eliminate the demand for IPs (or the demand that ISPs claim there is).

Without demand for IP space there will be no longer a need to charge ridiculous amounts for IP blocks (or even single IPs). Hell, there won't be a need to bundle home routers with Internet service to give NAT capabilities to the home.

Looks like a lot of possible lost revenue. God forbid that happens.

$10 for an extra IP is the average cost for broadband (used to be about $5), most ISPs don't even want to give you a static IP (back in 1995 it cost $30/extra for a static IP on dialup!)

I have something like 1 million+ IPs assigned to me with IPv6 and I am using 10 (for what you ask? for vhosts because that's all IPv6 is useful for).

Would I be using more than the 1 IP I am "dynamically" assigned if it wasn't "free"? No.

Re:of course they are shrugging it off...

[Lord_Slepnir]

Of course, it's a big conspiracy by the ISPs to rail you on the cost of IP addresses. It has nothing to do with the fact that to support IPV6, the ISPs would have to spend hundreds of man hours upgrading their routers and servers. And nothing to do with the fact that they would have to spend even more resources on technical support for their customers ("Durrrr... my iMac can't access the network. It just says something about Eye-Pee-Vee-Six com-pat-ability."), and that until everyone else adopted it, their customers would have trouble doing anything more complex than web browsing ("d00d, my 1337 kl4n c4n't g3t to my ph4t 53rv3r N3 more 51nc3 j00 n3rf3d my IP addr355 w1th th15 IPV6 cr4p"). And I'm sure the customers of the first ISPs to do this will wait paitently with their now disfunct connections while every one catches up.

Re:of course they are shrugging it off...

[cyb97]

However alot of the home routers also take care of firewalling or at least some degree of firewalling...
The day we get IPv6 end-to-end, I guess we'll see a lot of hacked windowsboxes that used to be nated out of reach...
Further there are several Microsoft OSes that doesn't even know IPv6 exists yet; Microsoft certainly have to take a big part of the blame for this issue

nat

[goofballs]

do cell phones, refirgerators, and other "appliances" really need a dedicated static i.p. address? why can't they use NAT and private addresses?

Re:nat

[molarmass192]

Probably because switches are cheaper than routers. Also for external host A to talk to fridge B on your home network, you'd need to assign a dedicated port to B from your router and A would need to know that port. Short answer, because it's less complicated and less expensive. Don't take this to mean that I think my toaster and blender need an IP addresses but a stove with a built in network enabled PS2 would make waiting for water to boil a hell of a lot more entertaining!

Re:nat

[ratsnapple tea]

people want to install Linux ... ssh from home ... use a PHP interface ... VNC+SSH tunnel ...

I can assure you that people do not have a burning desire to do these things you mentioned. Unless what you meant is that you expect the entire IT industry to move to IPv6, just to suit a few lonely geeks?

Would be nice, but it's not going to happen.

Re:nat

[squiggleslash]

you don't need it to do that. there's other ways to do the same thing, so the shortage isn't critical for that crap.

Well, yeah, one can always find work-arounds. I could create a virtual host Apache on my gateway that proxies http://fridge.my.domain/ to the fridge's Web server, but it'd be convoluted. The only reason it's not a big deal right now is: (well, two reasons):

1. Fridges don't have webservers right now, and RFID system isn't anywhere near ubiquitous enough for your fridge to be able to tell you whether you're out of milk.
2. Most cellphones and other portable devices for web access are lacking a certain something. I wouldn't want to check the contents of my fridge on one yet.

regarding your second point, i sure as heck don't think i want the entire telecommunications infrastructure to be ip based. the telco infrastructure is incredibly robust compared to the ip infrastructure, and will be for the forseable future. tell me, how often do your phones at work go down, versus the computer network?

Poor comparison because the build quality of both is different, and IPv4 is trying to do a lot more than POTS. Additionally, a hub costs about $20, a switch $40-100 depending on the number of ports. Aside from the installation costs, chances are my office's Ethernet network cost less than $1,000. By comparison, my office's phone network probably cost over 20 times that. Worse still, for the most part, people notice network outages more than phone outages because chances are we're using the networks all the time. We also tend to blame things on "the network being down" when it's actually some NT box somewhere that's crashed.

If and when serious voice networks switch over to IP, you can expect to see some much higher quality equipment made available, at a somewhat higher price than we see now.

Here we go...

[smallpaul]

Canned response 1: There is no problem. Use NAT.
Canned response 2: NAT is only good for outgoing.
Canned response 3: NAT is an easy way to secure machines.
Canned response 4: NAT is an abomination in the eyes of the Internet gods.
Canned response 5: Even when we have IPv6, ISPs will charge huge amounts for IP addresses.

If you write P2P software you will know that NAT is a major pain in the ass and requires very bizarre architectures involving reflectors owned and run by third parties (or at least port forwarding). More IP addresses cannot be a bad thing and we have to move sooner or later.

Re:Here we go...

[swb]

I'll vouch for #4. It's not bad for home users or areas where you have real limited interconnection with other networks. But it's a royal pain if you use NAT and RFC1918 addresses on a large network and have to do frequent interconnection with other networks who also do the same.

ASPs and others offering network interconnectivity services on a regular basis shouldn't ever use it in a way visible to customers, as it will result in a lot of address collision and annoying NAT-NAT double conversions that are a PITA to debug.

I've had ASPs vehemently insist that 10.0.0.0/8 was *their* block.

Are you sure?

[Wavefront]

This Slashdot article reported that the impending IPv6 shortage is just a myth, and this Slashdot article repeated what CmdrTaco says. What is the real story here?

American Attitude, but why not?

[slyckshoes]

In general*, I'd say Americans don't become too concerned with change until it becomes necessary for THEM. Sure, the rest of the world needs it, but we don't. In this case I don't know if it's terribly crucial. Our (lack of) adoption doesn't seem to be slowing down that of anyone else. Also, we have plenty of large, international corporations that must make changes based on international customers as well as American customers, and I believe that will influence the speed of American migration to IPv6.

*Generalization, not meant as an insult to anyone and not speaking for everyone.

Re:I'll donate a few IP Addy's for a good cause

[CowBovNeal]

You can have mine too - 192.168.0.1/24.

Seriously though, once the world starts to move to a IPv6 platform, then what will the corporations do with their non compatible routers and networking equipment?

Maybe companies in poorer countries could aquire it for their internal networking. Stuff like this is real costly right now.

I would love to see some real good networking stuff on ebay for cheap.

3. Profit!!!

[Waffle Iron]

A scarce resource is an opportunity for profit by those who control it. The U.S. Internet infrastructure is controlled by the same parties who control vast swaths of IPv4 address space. They stand to profit if supplies get tight. I see very little motivation for these parties to ever dilute the value of their current IP address real estate by moving to IPv6.

If you cheap service, they'll give you an unwieldy NAT setup behind a dynamic IP address. If you want your own fixed IP address, you'll pay the tollkeepers a handsome fee to get it.

Re:there is a total of 1 billion IPs left

[mopslik]

Does anyone know why we need more?

The world population currently stands at over 6 billion, and growing. If only 17% of the world uses simply one extra IP, then your supply is exhausted. Of course, this ignores issues generated by distributing IPs in blocks rather than individually, restricting certain IPs, etc.

Think of IPv6 as "preventative" medicine. Sure, you might feel healthy despite having a 44" waistline, smoking 3 packs a day, and consuming gallons of lard for breakfast each morning, but what do you do when you suddenly realize you should change? It's certainly not an instantaneous solution, and it's far better to have stopped the situation from happening in the first place.

Re:Old News

[mdvolm]

Not to be too nit-picky here, but I too would like to keep "big business" happy, since they see fit to employ me. Also, would it be ok for "small business" if they didn't want to switch to ipv6, or is it just "big business" that's evil?

Honestly, I'm not losing any sleep over this, it will work itself out when it has to.

Individual IP addresses aren't globally assignable

[bigpat]

Just because you have a Billion IP addresses available doesn't mean you can just get any one of those from the list and start using it. The IP addresses are assigned in blocks which correspond to networks. So to truely provide addresses for a global end-to-end IP network there are going to have to be a heck of a lot more addresses out there just to cover individuals not to mention all these devices people want to hook up. So, figure one or two IP addresses per person and we are already Billions short of the number needed. Figure more than that including remote sensing devices, routers, automated systems and oh yea businesses... then we are at a far greater shortage. Sure we can just add complexity and do some address translation, but are the conversion costs really that insurmountable as to make IPv6 out of reach? Most routers and computers have built in support for IPv6, but its seems that nobody is willing to ditch the old numbers and just use their IPv6 equivalents.

Arin should charge more for ipv4 and less for ipv6

[cheetah]

We aren't going to see a major shift in the US until Arin starts pushing Ipv6. The real problem is that currently getting Ipv6 costs money and doesn't get you very far. Look at it this way... currently a Ptla /32 costs $2500 a year. But people that have been sitting on Ipv4 blocks for years don't pay anything. I know of two Isp's that would like to offer Ipv6 the their customers but because they don't have their own Ipv4 netblocks they don't want to pay $2500 a year just so few of their customers have Ipv6. So instead of getting Ipv6 and moving away from Ipv4 they are forced to stay with Ipv4.

I think that the situation is currently backwards to the way it should be. Arin ( and other Ipv4 providers ) should be charging next to nothing for Ipv6 netbocks ($100 or so) and slowly start charging more for Ipv4 blocks each year. So for the first year charge $100 for each Ipv4 block (on top of any other fees). The second year they would charge 500 and the year after that 1000 and then 3000 and so on... Until we start charging more for Ipv4 address's than Ipv6 we will not see any major move to Ipv6. The more people that can get switched over to Ipv6 the sooner the better.

Enough

[Doesn't_Comment_Code]

Are you totally sure we will be out of addresses? Would you bet your life on it?

I think if we gave the world 100,000 addresses, they would use 100,000. If we gave the world 1,000,000,000 they would use 1,000,000,000 if we gave ... and so on. Perhaps wise use of addresses is in order. Does every cell phone need a static IP so all the teenagers can show off to their friends? I don't think so.

And who will be footing the bill for all the converting and maintainance? Will it be the United States? I don't think it's American-centric or clodlike to not want to take on a huge responsibility like that for nothing. If a bunch of countries approached the U.S. and said they would foot the bill, I think it would be much easier to change our minds.

Re:Enough

[frost22]

Are you totally sure we will be out of addresses? Would you bet your life on it?

Argh!!

This is so incredible frustrating. Some people's ignorance is, apparently, uncureable.

Yes, there is an address shortage. It is already there. Right now !

Proof is simple. People don't get all adresses they feel they need.

Truth is, Morons like you have at some point decided that they know better than me what adresses I need. So You just claim there is enough because You think everybody gets what You consider sufficient. Elitist crap asshole reasoning!

Results of plocies like that is that large carriers run public IP services on private adress space. My company is one of them. Another example: most GPRS services use private IPs and big fat lousy NAT kludges. I personally have recently had to write an analysis about a customer's bitter complaint that he couldnt use the VPN service we sold him from his cellphone. As it turned out, he used gprs, and the aforementionet NAT kludge somehow broke IPSEC.

Suckers like you are modern day internet luddites. You have - out of thin air - concluded that last year's technology is everthing anybody might ever need, and therefore decided that further technological advancement is superfluous. And so you fight tooth and nails any meaningfull progression.

Tell MIT to release their Class A

[upplepop]

Tell MIT to give back their Class A, unless they *actually* have 24 million machines over there! There is no way a university needs that many IP addresses. I believe Stanford already gave up theirs because they realized it was unncessary.

Re:Tell MIT to release their Class A

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space

there are quite a few /8 assignments that could be reviewed.

012/8 Jun 95 AT&T Bell Laboratories
013/8 Sep 91 Xerox Corporation
015/8 Jul 94 Hewlett-Packard Company
016/8 Nov 94 Digital Equipment Corporation
017/8 Jul 92 Apple Computer Inc.
018/8 Jan 94 MIT
019/8 May 95 Ford Motor Company
020/8 Oct 94 Computer Sciences Corporation
032/8 Jun 94 Norsk Informasjonsteknology
034/8 Mar 93 Halliburton Company
038/8 Sep 94 Performance Systems International
040/8 Jun 94 Eli Lily and Company
044/8 Jul 92 Amateur Radio Digital Communications
045/8 Jan 95 Interop Show Network (yeah thats right they need a /8 *chuckle*)
048/8 May 95 Prudential Securities Inc.
052/8 Dec 91 E.I. duPont de Nemours and Co., Inc.
054/8 Mar 92 Merck and Co., Inc.
055/8 Apr 95 Boeing Computer Services

i am sure there are a few more that could let go of space.

Re:I'll donate a few IP Addy's for a good cause

[deranged unix nut]

Forget about the equipment, what are they going to do about their software?!?

Every bit of network interface code needs to be updated.

This could be as much of a pain as Y2k was.

Re:BZZZT wrong!

[Chibi Merrow]

I'd hope not wanting my country's businesses to invest huge amounts of their limited capital into something that they'd see no benefit from doing monetarily or otherwise is not something limited to American citizens... If so, I cry for the world economy.
Will the US switch to IPv6? Absolutely. Will they do it before it makes economic sense to? Absolutely not. If US consumers start demanding the sort of devices (connected phones, appliances, etc) that require a massive rollout of IPv6 capabilities, I gaurantee you IPv6 will see rapid adoption. But until it makes business sense, they won't and they shouldn't. Make the net future proof? The majority of routing hardware in the US is Cisco; most of which supports IPv6 by flipping a switch or a firmware upgrade. When the time comes, it'll be done.
In response to the poster that spoke about asynchronous callback on phones: Good point. You've shown me a good reason for IPv6 rollout. Now, when US users demand it... See previous paragraph. :)

Get off your butts...

[dfn5]

It almost seems like a daily occurence where slashdot reports on how much the Internet needs IPv6 or how much it is just hype. The fact that NAT is so prevelent is proof that we don't have enough addresses.

However, there appears to be a misconception that Governments or ISPs must be the ones to make the conversion first. IPv6 is designed to run side by side with IPv4. I was given 1 IPv4 address from my ISP, but I can use the IPv6 6to4 transition mechanism and get 80 bits worth of routable addresses. And my ISP didn't have to do anything to set it up. (Static IP needed)

Solaris, Linux, and Windows supports this right now. So I say get off your butts and get on IPv6 today.

IPv6 is a good thing, USA or not!

[billsf]

Don't really think it matters anymore what the USA thinks or does. Certainly they are the world's greatest threat to peace but that is quite offtopic. As for IPv6 it really is "Plug 'n Play" even if Microsoft can't quite do it yet. As stated, it is fully compatible with existing IPv4 and "opensource" has it completely covered. It just works and if, as one reader said: "99% won't care", that is just as well as they won't have to care. What could be better?

Assignment can be automatic, while not exactly "two googols" of addresses, 2^128 minus those reserved is quite some number! (use your 'bc' and see it for yourself) If there are seven billion people on the planet (and that is an overestimate) we are looking at over some 1.8 x 10^26 "class C equivelant" per every human on the planet! (sorry Griffen, you grossly under-estimated in the same line you grossly over-estimated! -- ditch that Microsoft crap!) I seem to come to a figure of over '60 quadrillion class C equivalents' per second of 7 billion people living for 100 years and the last part is probably a gross exagreratation of what the average human life expectancy will be. Sure the US of A is scared!

Somehow i fail to see the added expence in all of this. It may cost Microsoft $Billions, but the people that are going to need this don't care in the least if Microsoft lives or dies. IPv6 is today and i must admit i was quite impresed a number of years ago when i plugged in my old laptop running FreeBSD into an IPv6 network powered by OpenBSD and it worked instantly! It is this way today on all major Unix type platforms.

Finally, i see only one downside to this and it is not important: "You probably won't be able to memorise all of your IP numbers and ranges no matter what tricks you use for IPv4 today". Get over it, it used to be cool to memorise your entire address book, but when mobiles came out, phone numbers got bigger and became 'throwaway' too. (This is quite litteral here in Europe as GSM mobile phones are usually given away with each and every subscription.)