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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."
This was reported everywhere yesterday.
We all know that the government only cares about keeping big business happy and won't force them to spend money to change to a new system.
What needs to happen is let the rest of the world switch and then shut off access to IPv4 for the US to accept it.
Just realise the reality of the situation..... There is no reality.
I've decided to donate the ip range of 127.0.0.1/24 to everyone. By reading this message you'll automatically have the ip's installed for you.
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.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Americans don't fear change per se... they fear changes to their bottomline.. that's what happens when a country is driven on money..
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
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.
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.
Just roll out IPv6 along with the metric system.
do cell phones, refirgerators, and other "appliances" really need a dedicated static i.p. address? why can't they use NAT and private addresses?
As 70% of the allocated space is in that specific region, as you can guess, it will cost 70% more (considering time spent on infrastructure such as router, switches etc upgrades).
;)
Of course, beeing a very technically forward place this should not be a problem, but some kind of a push is really needed. Especially for low-budget companies, instutions etc that make out a big part of the IP customers - they simply don't always have the "cash" for the migration. And "why migrate when this works fine for us" is another big catch.
Make the consumers start migrating and the rest will follow more quickly, the business will go where the consumers are... Now just how do we get the consumers to where there is no business?
(Please consider that this is from a very narrow point of view on the whole thing, it's just to put things in one perspective of many)
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.
Why can't cell phones use NAT? I thought they already did.
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?
"It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe."
"We couldn't care less about you other countries" seems to be the US motto nowadays.
When viewing this artical, in the browser taskbar it says 'US Shrugs Off World'...
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
too bad IPv6 doesn't have DNS eh? Oh wait, it does.
I think this is a good thing. Hopefully the use of DNS and Reverse-DNS will become much more prevalent, and we can forget all about using IP's.
Btw, you can get on the IPv6 network now. Join the 6bone. You don't even need a native IPv6 provider, you can use 6over4 to connect to the network over an IPv4 only network.
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.
they told congress that more IPs would only lead to more IP theft
*rimshot*
I'll be here all week folks.
But you are right, the switch over to IPv6 will be costly and that's a big reason why it hasn't been widely adopted. But here's my thinking on this: if you look at this for the long-range economics, more IP addresses will be a good thing. Every device you own can have an address and when a device has an address, companies can sell you services for it. Certainly, I'm not the only one to ever realize this and so I've got to assume that companies just aren't ready to roll out their product line of George Foreman Grills/Web Browsers - but it's coming.
In short, the economics of the move are relevant but not in the simple sense that companies just don't want to pony up. The market has to be ready to capitalize on the change.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
D.J.Bernstein has an insightful rant about how/why the transition to IPv6 is going too slow while some people claim the transition is already done.
I work for an ISP. One of my responsibilites is to manage our IP space (~/16). I am tired of dealing with IP justification, ARIN and customers who want to have public IPs on their office printer farm. Double and yes, sometimes triple NAT in order to get customer networks to talk to monitoring infrastructure. The sooner IP6 gets here the better.
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.
Available number of IPv4 addresses: 4.2 billion
Number of people on earth: 6.35 Billion according to ibilio
At this moment, Every other person on earth could have their own IP address. And we'd still have a billion IP's to spare.
Throw NAT into the equation just for fun.
With proper addressing schemes, IPv4 still has a ton of life left in it. It's nice to know IP6 is out there. But just because it's better doesn't mean it will ever gain world wide acceptance.
Just ask Preston Tucker, The makers of the Betamax, The Newton development team, etc
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I keep reading about how every device needs to have an ip address. WHY??? Why does every single device these days need to be connected to the internet? I see much more bad coming from a fully connected world then now.
Imagine your air conditioner, refrigerator, television and VCR, amongst other thigns, all connected via ip to the net. You could then make it so the user could log in to a server that acted as a gateway to these devices, and told them what to do when to do it. Now, say some punk kiddie scripter gets control of this gateway, and tell the frig to turn off, the air to be set at 60 (In southern cali where it gets to the 90s regularly this is bad), the tv turned on, the VCR to record (or try if a tap is there). All this is going on while joe user has no clue at all. Imagine the money lose because of someones actions all because we insist on things being connected?
I suppose that is why I just don't get why it must all be conncetd, which is why I don't see why 4.3 billion addresses isn't enough. I mean, do cell phones need ips, really? Can't the cell phone companies just nat some address space. They could fit i think 60 million by natting the 10 network if i recall. Oh well.
Santa Cruz Operation Incorporated (SCO-3)
Santa Cruz Operation Ltd (SCOL)
Santa Cruz Operation Incorporated SCO1 (NET-150-126-0-0-1) 150.126.0.0 - 150.126.255.255
Santa Cruz Operation Ltd SCO-1 (NET-192-86-169-0-1) 192.86.169.0 - 192.86.169.255
Santa Cruz Operation Ltd SCO-2 (NET-192-153-2-0-1) 192.153.2.0 - 192.153.2.255
Santa Cruz Operation Inc SBCIS68512 (NET-63-199-9-216-1) 63.199.9.216 - 63.199.9.223
Santa Cruz Operation Inc. SBCIS21385 (NET-63-192-223-80-1) 63.192.223.80 - 63.192.223.87
.sig
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.
If other countries were willing/able to dis-associate their chunk of the Internet from the US's chunk, they could do that RIGHT NOW to solve the IP Address shortage and not spend any money on the IPv6 upgrade. Just cut the cables and re-assign the addresses that America previously 'owned' to other nations on the Non-American Internet. It's the same principle as addressing on a private network; you can use the same IPs as someone else, just as long as your network can't see their network.
Oh, and with NAT your networks can even be connected and still work. Hey wait, if we can use NAT to hide non-unique addresses from the Internet and not lose connectivity... Why the big push for the switch?
The fact of the matter is users of the Internet DON'T WANT to be disconnected from the American section of the Internet. And the rest of the world switching to IPv6 while the US lags a few years behind won't bring that about, either. You can route between IPv4 and IPv6 networks (that's what the protocol was designed for) and there's no incentive for American businesses to spend money on an upgrade that they'll see no return on.
Really man, find a good reason to spit venom at the US and stick to it. Attacking us because the other nations of the world want a unique IP address on every phone, car, bike, toaster, and gilette razor while we don't see the need for it immediately is just silly. The world can do what it wants and we can do what we want without breaking anything.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
As reported before, the US Department of Defense is going to become fully IPv6 compliant by 2008 and purchasing only IPv6 compliant devices starting in October (see this press release).
Will they make full compliance by 2008? Probably not, knowing how government institutions work. However, DoD purchases a lot of computers, a lot of networked devices, etc. I remember hearing about 70% of their traffic goes accross the Internet (years ago, and they create a lot of traffic.) They have been a big influence on the 'net in the past, and I think this will be a big catalyst to IPv6 in the future.
espo
> Every device you own can have an address
Hell, every dust spec on every mite on every device you own can have an address. Too bad Dr. Seuss isn't around to write about it.
IPv6 isn't all about greater address space. It also brings improvements on routing and network autoconfiguration. The packets can also be classified into different categories, etc.
Enable your box with IPv6 today, Freenet6 provides free IPv6 connectivity over IPv4. Get some IPv6-enabled apps and use some IPv6-enabled servers/services, FTP and IRC being among the available ones.
Because the way IPs where shared out earlier (class-based, remember good 'ole a/b/c) alot of people got 16,000 IPs just becase they need 257 IPs...
The planning didn't really hold water when TCP/IP became mainstream...
Look at the low-end of the IP-range (where most of the big assignements are), IBM are assigned 9.0.0.0/8, leaving them with 255^3 (- unusuables) 16 million addresses. That's enough for a small country. Ironically they don't even use them for their own website which is hosted on 129.42.0.0/16 which is a different subnet also owned by IBM so add another 16,000 addresses to those 16 million and probably countless other subnets held by IBM or IBM subsiduaries in different parts of the world...
Get the picture now?
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.
I'd put a webcam in my fridge so I can finally find out what happens to that little light when I close the door!
Seriously though, for an IP enabled fridge to be of any use you'd have to have a way of knowing what's in it. Strike me down, but this seems like a reasonable application of RFID.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
Are you totally sure we will be out of addresses? Would you bet your life on it?
... 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.
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 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.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Ok, I would be willing to convert my network to IPv6, but where do I begin? I use DSL, and have a static IP. How do you (a) get a block of IPv6 addresses, and (b) get your ISP to actually connect them to you?
If your ISP doesn't support IPv6, are you SOL?
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
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.
Even if a NAT is set up in an office, it's doesn't have to be used for VoIP. At our office, the phone switch is assigned direct IP addresses. But even if there are 75 people behind the NAT, no one would assign 75 IP addresses to the phone switch. Really smart switches would route local calls to the phone company's copper, and long distance to IP. If all IPs are in use, the phone company's copper is used for long distance. The net result is that less IPs are used than the number of workstations, even with VoIP in heavy use.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
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
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
dyndns.org
I have a dynamic IP (pppoe) and have hosted a personal server for several years. I have an address where I can FTP, ssh, start up a quake server, and run a website. With dyndns, webhop, NAT and IP forwarding on my firewall, it is all easy, and it is all sitting in my computer room.
Seriously, if you have a dynamic IP and want to have a static address linked to it, visit dyndns.org.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
It's RFC 2373
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
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.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
DNS is nice, but how do you "name" all of the trillions of IP adresses? ConnectediToaster000034433003482774464 is just as bad as 3ffe:ffff:0100:f101:0210:a4ff:fee3:9566...
Marcus Ranum (author of NFR and someone who knows what he's talking about):
"IPV6 is insane overcomplexity if that was the only problems we wanted to solve. We could have doubled the address size of V4, bumped the version number, and left-filled from zero. As far as the "route glut" problems that stimulated the original design of IPV6, we could have used conventions (e.g. something like CIDR addressing which hadn't been thought of when the V6 effort started) that could easily have solved those issues.
Basically, the standards pukes are having fun playing their little games but none of it's really going to solve real problems. IPV6 is gonna be like ISO protocols all over again: what if they gave a protocol and nobody came?"
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.)
"Microsoft, whose operating system runs 80 percent of the world's computers, has adopted the new addressing scheme in its Windows XP operating system, but it's switched off by default. The latest version of Apple's operating system is also IPv6-compatible.
;)
The open-source community has also begun incorporating IPv6 into its own operating systems."
Oh yes, we have 'just begun' to put IPV6 support in Linux, FreeBSD, etc.. I think these features were evident in the open source OS's before Microsoft and Apple made the switch.
I could be wrong. It's happened once or twice before.
Someone who works for IBM told me that their internal network is called the '9.' network.
So called because all the dotted ip addresses beginng with 9, (i.e.
9.0.0.1 through 9.255.255.254 belong to them).
Thats 0.4% of the ENTIRE IPV4 address space, assigned to one company. IRC, MIT has a similar allocation...
When reading and replying to this article please bear in mind that writers at Cnet never make technical errors.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian