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The exhaustion of IPv4 address space
FireFury03 writes "Cisco has an interesting article talking about estimates for the exhaustion of the IPv4 address space, and the inevitable move to IPv6. It predicts that the IPv4 address space will be exhausted in 2 - 10 years and suggests that it isn't worth trying to reclaim old allocations. With the mainstream use of IPv6 now potentially within the ROI period of many products the manufacturers need to start including support, but will the ISPs roll out native IPv6 networks before they absolutely have to? IMHO, ISPs providing native IPv6 support would be a Good Thing since it opens up the door for peer-to-peer technologies such as SIP without needing nasty NAT traversal hacks, but a major stumbling block seems to be a complete lack of IPv6 support on current consumer-grade DSL routers (tunneling over IPv4 is an option but requires more technical know-how from the end user)." Of course, Cisco may have some vested interest in driving up the IPv6-compatible router sales *cough*, but the bottom line is that the transition will have to happen at some point in the near future.
Interesting, but is 2 - 10 years as precise as they can be?
8 years seems to be a long time, to me...
Most of the major ISPs have already rolled support for IPv6. They started the rollout about five years ago when the lack of IP address began to be a problem. I know for a fact that Sprint is ready to roll it, they are just waiting for other networks to support it. T-Mobile is also ready to roll it as is AOL. It's not really a big deal. It's already been done. Everyone is just waiting to push the big red button and turn on the support. Hell, even Windows supports it.
I remember reading a while ago that NAT actually turned out to be better than IPv6 by virtue of it "solving" the limited number of addresses problem and simultaneously providing a defence against simple hacking attempts by hiding your real IP address.
Can anyone explain whether this is true or not and why?
Argh.
"and suggests that it isn't worth trying to reclaim old allocations."
Isn't worth it to whom?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Will *BSD die before the switchover to IPv6? Maybe a good Slashdot poll:
[ ] Yes
[ ] No
[ ] Microsoft
[ ] I don't know what IPv6 is, but I'll post anyway
[ ] Cowboy Neal encodes my packets
I have my IPv4 address. Why should I worry? Perhaps I can even sell mine to the highest bidder when the shite hits the fan.
Hell, maybe the address shortage will create this crazy new "Road Warrior" world where IP addresses are a rare commodity and people have to fight each other with mad overclocked computers just to get some packets routed. And then Mel Gibson can play an ex-help-desk-guy-turned-hero whose Mac was killed by software pirates in the movie version.
All I know is, I'm training my kids how to catch sharp boomerangs.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
fe80::02d0:c1ff:fe5c:0010/10
2002:c0a8:1122::5efe:0a01:0101/48
2001:7f8:2:c01f::2
I mean, DNS goes a long way towards turning that hex into something memorable, but as a sysadmin it does NOT make my life easier. Let's reclaim some of thoseI've been looking forward to a time when everyone gets at least one fixed IP address. Want to run a server of any sort? No? How about a mail server built in to your cable modem? Or do you like your email getting stored at your ISP? Then there are any number of handy p2p type apps that will benefit. VOIP comes to mind - without needing to subscribe to a directory service. Fire up gnome-meeting or whatever and enter your friends IP (well the software could remember it for you) - the same IP they have every time. Actually, fixed IPs for everyone reduces the role of the ISP to simply being a network connection like they should be. Also, it takes effort from developers to get software working through NAT, so the burden on them should be reduced.
To make most efficient use of the 4.3 trillion possible IPv4 addresses, all we need is one giant honking DHCP server for the world to use. Of course, the USA should run it forever.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I have worked in the internet service business for over a decade now. I have seen a lot of things come and go, and a lot of predictions about when we would run out of IP space.
The bottom line is that the only people who realy WANT a rollout of IPv6 is Cisco. Why? Because the vast majority of their existing installed routers will not support IPv6 with anywhere near the same feature set and packet rate as those routers can handle with IPv4. Thus, IPv6 means people upgrading equipment that isn't really deficient.
Most people have no concept of:
a) How much IP space we have left.
b) How extremely inefficent we have been with a large percentage of the address space.
c) How much assigned, announced, and routed space is completely unused.
d) How much the rate of growth has flattened.
e) How wrong every prediction about when we run out of IP space has been thus far.
If you search the nanog archives, you'll see posts by myself going back many years stating essentially "Somebody tell me why we need IPv6 again?"
Do not hold your breath. We're 10-15 years away from IPv6, because it will take an even larger gross expenditure for the service providers to upgrade to support IPv6 than it did for the broadcast industry to upgrade to HDTV.
This is what industries that rely on revenue growth do when their customer growth flattens. They invent a new widget, come up with reasons why everybody needs it, market it, and hopefully everybody buys the product all over again. IPv6 is admittedly a good bit different; it was created by geeks in attempt to solve a perceived problem. However, it was siezed upon by the router vendors as a future "upgrade when growth flattens" path.
Don't buy into the hype. IPv4 is here to stay for a long time. Even when IPv6 starts to have some decent degree of market penetration, you will always find most of the devices on the net are IPv4 behind IPv6 to IPv4 NATs.
Anyhow, I myself was curious about if/when IPv6 would be rolled out. One of the talks was about how to deal with IPv4 space running out, and a lot of the talk revolved around such things as multiple web sites running on the same IP (which was very uncommon then) and other ways to use less address space. Some audience members gave other suggestions for conserving IP space such as ways to use Network Address Translation to limit public IP use. I would say the feeling in the hall was that this was not a problem, and that people had to go the route of IP sharing, and aside from the need for more IP sharing, everyone pretty much liked the situation as it was, which was in contrast to the prevailing attitude in the world outside the hall. One audience member rose his hand and said, "What about IPv6?" The response to this was the entire audience broke into laughter - it was the funniest thing they had heard that week. After that I began thinking about IPv6 more along the lines of projects such as MBONE (anyone remember the hooplah over that years ago?). Not that IPv6 will never be implemented, but this story that IPv6 was needed straightaway could have been written 8 years ago. I haven't seen much headway in it in the past 8 years, except for products promising they were IPv6 compatible, just in case. Not that IPv6 will never be rolled out on a large scale, but I'm not holding my breath.
I know that Azeurus happily opens up a few ports on my router every time that I start it up. Whether this is a good idea security wise is another story...
NAT is not a security tool.
NAT is not a security tool.
NAT is not a security tool.
Network Address Translation was never intended to function as a firewall or a packet filter, it was designed exclusively to allow multiple computers to share the same IP at once. That's it.
The fact that NAT has some side effects which are similar to a firewall has been a big problem for network security, because it leads users and even administrators to believe that their network does not need a firewall because they use a NAT system.
We are finally, after many years, starting to see real firewall use become commonplace, and a XP even has an automatic software firewall now, but if it hadn't been for NAT, I bet people would've been implementing real, security-focused firewalls a lot earlier.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
We had an IT person in our london office at a previous job. When I was out there, I had mentioned that they were running out of IP's for the office and we'd have to assign a new block. She pulls out her spreadsheet which is fully poplated up to something like .253, and proceeds to show me all the empty space up to .999.
.255. We should just all follow her lead and go to .999. It's like a network that goes to 11 man.
Obviously we are underutilizing the ipv4 space, no one seems to use anything above
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