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IPv4 Address Crunch In 2 Years, IPv6 Not Ready
An anonymous reader writes "We've known for ages that IPv4 was going to run out of addresses — now, it's happening. IPv6 was going to save us — it isn't. The upcoming crisis will hit, perhaps as soon as 2010, but nobody can agree on what to do. The three options are all pretty scary. This article covers the background, and links to a presentation by Randy Bush (PDF) that shows the reality of the problem in stark detail."
n/t
It's not hard to figure out why we haven't solved this problem. It costs MORE to fix it now than it does to wait.
So just wait until it costs more to live with IPv4 than to migrate to new systems. Then EVERYONE will be working on a solution.
If IPv4 runs out and we can't use IPv6, then I guess we split the difference and use IPv5
Here is the story from a few weeks ago
And as I said before, the solution is to take back some of those huge class A blocks from companies like HP, Ford and GE, which are not using all the space. That would buy a few years.
To hand over the bazillion address they have lock away. Problem solved for a few more years.
People will move and applications will get ported to IPv6, but only when they HAVE To move to IPv6 OR when there is some benefit that outweighs the cost.
Simple.
Is this really a problem for most people? NAT really.
i'm sharing my blog ip address with a porn site dedicated to a fetish for women with moustaches, some guy's home security system in hong kong, a government bureaucrat's cell phone in helsinki, and an email server for a truck dispatching company waco texas
i think it's also a pretty good premise for a reality show or situation comedy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And put China behind it. IPv4 addresses, plenty. Botnet problem, solved.
The shift will also depend on hardware vendors making sure that their hardware is completely ipv6 compatible. Even with quite a few vendors saying that their stuff is compatible, I know of a quite a few major bugs still lurking with those same vendors. Not many large companies are going to switch to IPv6 until they need to upgrade hardware, if their existing hardware is only IPv4 compatible.
My girlfriend's "pet name" is Randy Bush!
would it be feasible to host, for example, 100 different websites on one ip using header information? or does that have traffic spike issues/ latency issues/ wasted cycles involved?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One thing is rather clear to me: We won't run out of IPv4 addresses anytime soon, instead the price will increase more and more and thus people will end up behind ISP enforced NATs, because IPs are to expensive for the average consumer. This is after all already the case, at least in part, static IPs are a premium service, not something you get for free from most ISPs.
So how to fix this? How about some good old government regulation? If you want to provide a "Internet service", you have to provide IPv6 or you can't call it "Internet". With a little force it shouldn't take all that long till the switch to IPv6 is done. But unless that happens the rarity of IPv4 addresses will simply be seen as a nice way to make money, instead of a problem that needs to be fixed.
There are measures in place to try and aid in conservation as the migration occurs. RFC 3021 provides the ability to utilize /31 address space on point to point links instead of a /30. This will literally halve address utilization by point to point links (a significant use of space among carriers). It requires some work to renumber, but following that, space can be re-allocated for other things. Cores can also be built into v6 space before transported networks killing more space. Private space can be utilized for equipment management instead of utilizing public addresses for everything. There are many ways that at least on the carrier side, this can be pushed off a bit with a little work, while the v6 migration continues. Carriers are crafty, they will find a way to make it work.
All of that said, that just means I think we will find a way to get by until V6 is fully in place. Not that we should forgo finishing V6 migrations.
America will then become the Saudi Arabia of ip addresses. Price of oil will drop to something 200,000,000 barrels for one address. Woot!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The basic solution to this problem is to deploy IPv6 as soon as you can, figure out what problems remain to be solved before you can use IPv6 100% and then put pressure on your ISPs, vendors, etc. to solve these problems. That's how the Internet grew like topsy in the first place, and its not too late to get this going. Two to three years is enough time.
ARIN has published a web site which collects information about how to move to IPv6 here: http://www.getipv6.info/
It's oriented towards the things that ISPs and other service providers (hosting centers, large IT depts) need to do to get IPv6 working in production.
Soon, the stock market analysts will be asking the big ISPs and telecom companies what actions they are taking to avoid going bankrupt in two years when the crunch hits. Any company that can't get new IPv4 addresses will have to stop growing their IPv4 networks. If they have an IPv6 network to take up the slack, no problem. If not, then customers will flock to the providers that have IPv6 ready to roll.
There was a network operator meeting at NANOG recently where they showed that it is almost possible to provide full Internet access, both IPv4 and IPV6, using an IPv6 connection. Yes, I know, "almost" means there were problems, but they were not massive problems. They were the kind of things that people were working on fixing with IPv4 networks back in the early 90's. And they did that because they went ahead and built IPv4 networks and tried to make them work for everything imaginable. When things broke, they fixed the bugs and moved on, eventually becoming the global Internet that we know today.
There is a way to avoid going bust when the address crunch hits in two-to-three years and that is: Get yourself IPv6 Ready!
I think this article by Dan Bernstein is a pretty good read regarding this subject.
That is one way to do it, keep patching it up and hope it becomes somebodies elses problem.
The problem is simple, the way we want to use the internet means we are getting more and more devices which desire their own internet adress. Some people suggest solutions like NAT but these only have so many uses especially when mobile phones become internet capable. If you want your internet node to be independent then you need an ip adress.
Don't believe me? Fine, give up your internet connection with its own IP and use the NAT solution of your ISP. Good luck running a torrent.
We could easily solve the entire problem if we just used NAT for every major ISP. It would free up countless adresses and keep IP4 usuable for decades rather then years.
So who is first? Who is going to give up their IP for their home for the greater good?
Thought as much, absolutly nobody.
It is the problem with humans, we don't want new power installations, we don't want to use less power and we refuse to switch to more economical appliances. Something has to give, but goverment or business is NOT going to do it. Sooner or later it just breaks down (see the LA brownouts) and finally a decission will have to be made.
Same with a solution to IP4 limited adress space. We will keep coming up with patches and ignore the problem until finally it can no longer be ignored and then we will have to really bite down to implement it at great cost and inconvenience when we could have solved it easily right now.
Because lets be honest, it ain't all that much of a problem. In the EU we switched currencies. A hell of a job but because it became accepted that it had to be done, it just happened.
We could easily do a switch to IP6 but only when the majority just accepts that it has to be done, and bites the bullet.
Analog mobile phones no longer work in the US, holland no longer airs analog tv signals, switches happen all the time. It is nothing special, but in each case somebody just had to say "we are switching and if you are not ready, though".
So what if countless devices will no longer work, at a given point you just have to be able to say "upgrade or be left behind" or you will be forced to increasinly bend over backwards to accomadate out of date tech.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"... shows the reality of the problem in stark detail."
s/stark detail/comic sans/;
DJB said it best at http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/ipv6mess.html Why switch from an Internet with a billion people on it to one that has nobody on it that can't be reached by IPv4?
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Lots of squatters buy tons of domain names with the sole purpose of just putting up a bunch of ads, and nothing else. Remove that and ipv4 will probably last for another 50-100 years.
Not only that, but maybe a little ISP responsibility across the board would be a good thing. Over the past few years I've had multiple clients with entire class C's. Total INTERNAL hosts for each client was less than 30. By a slim margin, most of those class C's were being given out by Sprint.
OK, I'm interested in technology, I know what IPv4 and IPv6 are, I know that there are many more advantages to IPv6 then to IPv4 etc. Yet I'm failing to see why I should care whether IPv4 addresses are running out or not.
But more to the point, what can I (as an individual who isn't part of the technocratic elite) do about it if I did care?
I don't code network stacks, nor kernel drivers, most of my software is written by someone else, and is automatically updated to fix problems and include new features.
I assume that by the time everyone else is using IPv6 I shall be too (simply by virtue of my software being updated).
So, why should I care? And what should I do if I did care?
I wank in the shower.
no we have Y2K0xA
1. Home routers that support IPV6 off the shelf.
2. Cable/DSL modems that support IPV6 off the shelf.
3. (The biggie) ISPs that hand out IPV6 addresses.
In a vain attempt to forestall the inevitable followups:
Yes, I am aware that I could install new software in my WRT-54G, and convert my home network to IPV6. But as long as my upstream connection is IPV4, this gains me NOTHING except a bunch of aggravation and downtime getting the thing set up. No thanks. When my ISP supports IPV6, then and only then will it make sense for me to convert.
Yeah, we always fall back on the government to help us out when us nerds aren't satisfied with how capitalism is driving the technological trends that need to happen.
But let's not forget those that went before us. Jun-ichiro Hagino, better known as Itojun, was one of the first researchers that was pushing for IPv6 since as long as I can remember (at least 2001). On top of that he was developing specifications for it and working through the BSD code to make it one of the first operating systems fully capable of being IPv6 compliant--starting a trend that needs to happen in more operating systems sooner. He even started documenting draft APIs to get developers thinking about how this would work inside software.
And then he died in a car accident at age 37. It's funny how you don't appreciate their work until they're dead. Almost like a painter or author.
Although many still carry on his work, the saddest part is that all his efforts to bring awareness to everyone about IPv6 may fall into the responsibilities of the government or, worse, capitalism.
My work here is dung.
Getting a domain doesn't give you an IP address
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
That has absolutely nothing to do with this. Registrars aren't using dedicated IP's for the singular purpose of hosting one "tasted" domain. Domain name issues really don't have anything to do with the IPv4 issue.
Computers communicate by ip address not domain name. For instance the slashdot server I am posting this on has IP 66.35.250.150
Now that doesn't mean that ALL of slashdot is hosted on that address, it doesn't mean ONLY slashdot is hosted on that address and it doesn't even mean slashdot the site/code is there.
What it means is that if my computer requests a connection on port 80 with certain information from that IP I will be given a slashdot page.
There might be a NAT solution with 66.35.250.150 being nothing more then a router, it might be a server where the webserver swiches me to the right set of pages based on the requested domain name.
There are PLENTY of solutions to host multiple sites from a single IP or have multiple servers behind a single IP.
The problem is that one of them are "sexy".
The problem is that shared IP is used mostly for cheapo sites, those sites where you share a server with many others. These solutions are typically very bad making everyone who has a site dream of the day they can afford a dedicated server.
Now there is no real reason why a dedicated server (the computer) could not share an outward IP address with other servers BUT that is not the way these things are done. IP adresses are cheap and plentifull and if you get your own dedicated server your hosting company will gladly give you a handfull of IP's to go with it.
What might be needed but will be very hard to do is convince people that they don't need their own ip for their site. Good luck with that, until the crunch becomes really thight what hosting company is going to take away something their customers have taken for granted for the good of the rest of the world? Might as well expect a car maker to stop making big gass guzzlers to save the enviroment.
Yes it is possible to host sites under a single IP. The only limit is how much the hardware/software that redirects the requests it receives to the right site can handle.
Think of it like this, the limit to the performance of your NAT solution at home is your router. You can't host 10 100mbit sites behind a 10mbit router.
But the tech doesn't matter, the problem is simply that people don't want it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
http://prujem.cz/ ... unlike ipv6porn.com, this one actually has some interesting content ;-)
You *do* know a domain isn't an IP address, right, moron?
The company died and no longer needs it. Maybe I will put it up on ebay.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
I know that IPV6 support 128 bit addresses but it also has a lot of other improvement/differences that might be slowing down it's adoption. Why not keep the IPV4 protocol but just changing the ip address size?
This certainly is a stupid idea but please explain me why.
What sig ?
Why? Your money is why.
/8s and /16s de-aggregate into 100s of thousands of individual prefixes. Is there any Cisco router right now that can handle a BGP IPv4 routing table of 2 million entries? Are you willing to scrap your entire Border Router investment in 2010 when the routing table grows from 300,000 routes to 750,000 routes? Do you know what the cost of a Cisco CRS-1 is, even if you can find one used?
If you want to continue to use an IPv4 address from your upstream ISP, you currently pay about US$10 per month for that address, more if you want a nice static address to run services on.
After 2012, or if one of the hair-brained free-market schemes to buy & sell netblocks comes into effect, the price your ISP has to pay for an IP address goes from ZERO to $10 or $20 per month per address. Currently, with a freely available pool of IP addresses, there was minimal cost associated with obtaining a netblock, just some administrative overhead to ask, and some technical cost to program the routers. ISPs discovered that they could charge US$30/month to a user, of which $10/month covers bandwidth, $10/month for the connection, and the remaining $10/month is the pure profit from renting you an individually addressable IP address.
When the crunch hits, IPv4 addresses will be accounted differently, no longer will they be seen as a free resource that earns $10/month, they'll be seen as a cost center that needs to have a margin associated with it. So if the company has to start paying even $1/month per address, they'll pass that cost on to the end users as a higher monthly fee.
In the end, those who don't have an IPv6 service with a migration strategy will see their internet connectivity increase in price. Maybe only a little in 2010, more in 2012, and if there isn't a mass migration to v6, significant costs after that. You, and every consumer, better hope that ISPs and hosting centers get a migration strategy in place soon, or your costs are going to skyrocket.
That was costs from the consumer PoV.
From the techie PoV, imagine what will happen to your router FIBs if some of those nicely aggregated
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
http://www.glocom.org/tech_reviews/tech_bulle/20020227_bulle_s2/index.html
"We will run out of IP addresses by 2008." (ICANN 2001) The estimate was derived by assuming that the number of remaining addresses as of 2000 was about 1.7 billion and demand for new IP addresses will be 75 million in 2000, and moreover that demand for IP addresses will increase in a geometric progression after 2001. Based on these assumptions, the addresses would be depleting by 2008 if demand grows by a factor of 1.3 each year, and by 2006 if it grows by a factor of 1.5.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I`m all for getting rid of domain tasting.. but it has nothing to do with running out of IP addresses. You can host a bazillion domains on one IP address (and most tasting companies do).
:(
Purple monkey dishwasher
In Windows 2008 server
IP6 and IP4 can coexist,
also does Vista.
Even more, you can have
IP6 over IP4.
Question : is W2008 really an answer to IP shortage ?
or is IP4 solution to Microsoft to sell W2008 ?
I am surprised by the coincidence the news come out when W2008 is live.
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
IPv6 has too much overhead. Drop it.
Here is a skeleton design of IPv7: take IPv4 exactly like it is today, and drop in IPv6 addresses.
Everything else, like encryption and IP addresses that move around the Internet, can be proposed for IPv8.
"Nine million for the secretaries fair
Seven million for the hackers scarce
Five million for the interns in smoky lairs
Three million for system admins
One net to rule them all
One net to bind them
One net to hold the files
And in the darkness pipe 'em"
With apologies to whoever wrote the original
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
That you mentioned India might come up with a solution reminds me of a book I read that discusses in the context of game theory (primarily Prisoner's Dilemma) why people (Indians in particular) make poor decisions as far as society is concerned to maximize personal returns.
"Games Indians Play" by V. Raghunathan
ISBN: 9780670999408
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
the MS solution.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A lot of this migration has been well thought out.
For starters, you can run v6 and v4 off the same device. So you could maintain your v4 connection while people start using v6. E.g. your ISP would give you both types of addresses (could even map your v4 address to your v6, e.g. 8123:ABCD::24.132.17.81 to make it easier to keep tabs on). Then services could start adding v6 support, and slowly we just turn off v4.
So it isn't like it's all or nothing. Granted, a lot of routers will need updating [or replacing] unless you want to do IPv6-in-IPv4 tunneling [which sucks]. But the point is you can run both stacks at once.
The problem is people don't want to deal with this new information. So we'll be stuck with the most inferior solution.
One useful site I tend to look at on a regular basis is Lars Eggert's IPv6 Deployment Trends, it uses the Alexa rankings to find the top 100 sites for various countries. You could always argue that these aren't the most visited sites - but it does give you an idea.
The top 100 sites for all these countries comes to a big fat total of 0%. I'm not expecting fast adoption, but it would've been nice to see some progress being made with these sites. Even the two sites which I regularly visit that report about IPv6 stories (Slashdot and Ars Technica) don't even have IPv6 records!
I suppose I'm just as bad as none of my personal sites don't have IPv6 records either, but then again my server host doesn't provide any native addresses yet.
I get so tired of reading this story every couple of years. This has been a problem for a long time - and it's always portrayed as gloom and doom that is only a couple years away. Realistically what does this mean for us? PAT. Woo woo, BFD.
Does anyone else think that perhaps the jump from 32 bits to 128 was driven by more than tech factors? With 128 bits to play with there is more than enough space to reserve a portion of the address for a social security number or some other government readable personal identifier. Then there will no longer be any need for court orders to map IP addresses to people - only a single piece of legislation that says every ISP should assign those bits in every address that is given to the customer. If you think this won't happen then I ask, why not? Are you thinking of the children and the terrorists?
use of pink and purple.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Actually, the U.S. Government is beginning to roll out IPv6 now, internally.
They have even cloned a bunch of IPv6 evangelists to convince PHB types.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Mobile devices don't really need to connect to IPv4 addresses and the number of mobile specific services out there is pretty limited and can more easily be switched over to run on IPv6 servers. Seems like a fairly targeted resolution to me.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Randy Bush's PDF presentation entirely in multi-coloured MS Comic Sans may well contain 'stark detail' but it looks like a nursery school show :)
Relinquish the wasteful Class A subnets allocated to US corporations. Most sovereign nations don't even have IP blocks of this size, and these corporations have no need for such a block, either. Only a small percentage of their allocated addresses are even routeable from the public Internet. Then CIDR out the recovered Class A subnets. This will also give the big corps an incentive to make the IPv6 transition happen.
There is a lot of feet dragging going on, partly because too many business plans rely on short term spending. The irony is that some of the companies which you expect to be leading the way in IPv6 migration don't even have web sites that are IPv6 enabled. This includes IBM, Apple, Microsoft, RedHat and Cisco. I make the point because they should be picking up the torch now that research sites have already done their part, and showing that it is an achievable goal, and not some sort of pipe-dream. /. readers at the same time, should probably get to know and understand the technology, since it is not a question of whether it will happen, but when. When it happens if the IT crowd doesn't understand IPv6, then we really have issues.
If you want to get an IPv6 web site running there are number of solutions, including using Apache 2 with IPv6 support activated and making sure you have an OS that supports an IPv6 stack - most modern OSs do.
Migration technologies for people stuck behind IPv4 NATs include Aiccu and Teredo (Vista includes this, and for other OSs there is Miredo). If you are at home, then one of the 'consumer' routers to support IPv6 out of the box is the Airport Extreme. If others support it out of the box I am not aware of this.
When you are ready see the dancing turtle - if you don't see it you are accessing it via IPv4.
Other stuff you can do in the meantime is checking to see if some your favourite network based applications handle IPv6 and if they don't make some noise. Its best to make the noise now, when it doesn't matter so much, than waiting until it does. On the bonus side they can advertise the fact they are IPv6 ready.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
and some like the Defense Information Systems Agency (whoever they are) own multiple blocks! That's an awful lot of addresses.
Sounds like an interesting way to put a dent in the US current account deficit. The gummint is sitting on a scarce resource that a lot of well-heeled corporations would be willing to pay for.
And then the US government can move to IPv6 shortly after sale, leaving the buyers with devalued assets. (Psych!!!)
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
At my company we have two main Cisco routers. One is about 7 years old and the other about 3 years old. The older one used to be able to handle full BGP routes but as the routing table grew and Cisco IOS bloat happened it's 128MB of RAM could no longer hold all that. I've had to trim it to connected routes and I can't update the IOS as all the current ones use too much RAM and wouldn't even work with what I've got it doing. So forget doing IPv6 on that one.
The other router isn't doing BGP and could probably handle IPv6. The problem then becomes all the machines on our network. Lots of legacy systems. If they can't handle IPv6 then we either have to replace them or have an IPv4/IPv6 gateway - another machine probably since I don't think the newer router could handle this.
The next issue then becomes our upstream providers. Neither of them are Tier-1 providers and neither offer IPv6 addresses yet.
Then there's the issue of network admins knowing how to use IPv6 addresses. I've been doing a bit of reading about them but until I start actually working with the systems it won't really sink in. I know my colleagues here haven't been attempting to learn anything about this and it will probably fall to me to educate them on this.
I'm not looking forward to any of this...
I am VERY ready for IPv6, what isn't is the f***n industry !
It's impossible to find a router modem wifi ADSL expresso coffe machine IPv6 ready at the street-corner wallmart.
THIS is the real issue.
Indeed, one of your 3 major IAP provides IPv6 connectivity. For FTTH (Fiber To The Home) it will enable all VoIP (Voice over IP) and similar "public internet address to public internet address" protocol to work on an universal plane (ex:XMPP/JINGLE/SIP/RTP/RSTP...), namely for all computers sharing internet access at home. The real challenges for IPv6 are mobility (signaling is very expensive traffic/latency wise), QoS (Quality of Service for low lantency traffic) and priority (emergency traffic). There is also the big issue of available and standardized mobile terminals...
At least Vista has IPv6 enabled by default! *ducks*
First post! (just in case I am...)
Lazy people. It seems like everyone is reluctant to adopt it because no one is using it, and no one is using it because no one has adopted it.
I foresee a - perhaps shortlived - opening for lots of filesharing.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
That pron sites arent to blame, and arent even the primary target to blaim. Call it a hunch; but I have a feeling that millions more people connecting to the internet and needing ips, and poorly distributed addresses (in terms of address class) also plays a very large factor. The number of addresses available hasn't changed; just the consumption of them. It seems like a similar problem to the domain names as well; there are plenty more of them that are being wasted on cynbersquatters, typosquatters, and 'blank pages' that are just serving ads and adsense and circular links to more of the same. The adult sites may take a large amount of them but then again you could also argue that the pron sites played a larger role in the expansion of web bandwidth and expansion than many other things. Perhaps the pron sites are gettign more out of control, but so are the bogus prescription drug sites, adult friend sites, 'shopping' sites, and other random garbage that I couldn't even begin to explain.
I would imagine that to some extent the dominant forces with the most financial interest in current IP address control probably also are playing some role in the hinderance of IPv6 because the increased address space will devalue existing IP's (whatever value that might be), allows for a power shuffle, etc.
Reminds me a lot of the "phone number" problem occuring in america, where the consumption of numbers has gone way up since the cellphone became mainstream and it feels like new area codes are constantly added such that you can almost never make a 7digit call, but more and more always a 10digit.
"Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny" ~Frank Zappa
EdelFactor
The presentation is clearly anti-IPv6, and makes several incorrect assumptions to trump up his baseless arguments. Thank goodness most techies will see right through it. Exactly how seriously are we supposed to take someone who writes their ideas up in PowerPoint and, for their primary font, chooses MS-freakin'-Comic-Sans?
... we just need to perhaps allocate them a bit more fairly.
... US and UK.
... and at what point are they considering UNRESERVING them ?)
... in real terms that is 79 / 255 or 31% of the whole bloody IPv4 structure STILL not being used .. all "reserved" by IANA.
According to the 2007 report, http://www.ip2location.com/ip2location-internet-ip-address-2008-report.aspx/, 50.5% of the whole IPv4 space is taken by just two countries
IANA has reserved all these class A nets (reserved for WHAT exactly
1,2,5,7,23,27,31,36,37,39,42,77-79,92-123,173-187,197,223,240-255
Have a look at the 1-31 class A nets, and see exactly who stil has huge gobs of the internet for themselves.
GEC, Army, IBM, DoD, AT&T Bell Labs, Xerox, HP, DEC, Apple, MIT, Ford Motor Company etc etc all feel the need to have IPs for 16,777,216 computers EACH !!!
If you downclassed even the "private" corporations in that bunch to class B nets, and left the gov and mil alone, you'd still be able to free up about another 100 million IP addresses to the rest of the world.
The sky is NOT falling, they just need to perhaps make better use of what they've got.
-make sure your software IS updated (I'm sure many people will be surprised when they find out their software is only IPv4 capable)
;-)
-get an ISP that supports IPv6
-actually use it once it is available to you, and report bugs to your ISP or software vendor.
That's it for a non-network programmer, nobody can expect more from you. Unless you have lots of free time and WANT to do more, then you could learn network programming and support the migration of some open source project
C - the footgun of programming languages
There are already many classes of users: those who own a
I agree that considering equality is very important in the net's future, but it's certainly not equal now, and the first step to fixing it would be recognising that.
Until my upstream supports IPv6, the fact that all my computers support it is pretty much irrelevant.
So yes, I care, but what can I *do*?
Hm. Most of the comments here seem to focus on IPv4 and natting and torrentabiliy, rather than v6.
I've deployed IPv6 at my employer. There's plenty of v6 stuff out there, and most (all?) of the major carriers support it. Cisco's implementation is working fine for me. The Unices I've tried seem to work properly, although v6 support is definitely unpolished at this point.
What doesn't work is Windows.
Vista's support may be better, but we all know the issues with Vista. XP support is abysmal.
I'd argue that the v6 infrastructure _is_ ready, despite some misgivings I have with it. What isn't is Microsoft.
Necessity is the mother of invention. If/When the crunch does come, there will be a big push to merge to the IPv6 model, fix whatever is wrong with it (I'm not sure anything is, anyone?), segued with some fancy advertising for "new, improved" networks, some slick campaign ads, and next thing you know, we'll all be forced into buying $100 nics again.
I can't wait.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
The logical way to go would have been to switch to IPv6 for everything in the core of the internet, working out to the edges, so that IPv4 was routed over an IPv6 network, without requiring anyone at the end points to change... IPv4 packets would be turned into IPv6 packets in the IPv4 subset of the IPv6 address space when they left the IPv4 endpoints, and then turned back to IPv4 if the destination didn't support IPv6. To access IPv6 resources you'd need a gateway that did both DNS and NATting, so your IPv4 lookup for an A record would be handled as a lookup for an AAAA record, and then a private IPv4 address would be assigned to that IPv6 address for you, and a fake A record comes back.
For many purposes proxy gateways would work just fine, with increasingly many programs supporting HTTP proxies for connectivity.
Why didn't this happen?
Comic sans is never the right choice for a typeface. That presentation hurts my eyes. -Kevin
The untrue, but unchangeable, folklore of Google Adsensers (people who try to make a living via free search engine traffic to web pages that display Google ads) is that it's crucial for your Google rankings that your website be hosted on a server with a "static IP" (I don't know why people can't say "IP address" anymore in that community). These are the folks that will pay more, and more, and more for the privilege of having their own IP addresses as scarcity increases. Thus, Google money will ultimately and indirectly fund the switch to IPV6, as ISPs serving the hordes of must-have-my-own-static-address Adsensers will be able to afford conversion.
The best thing that can be done to accelerate this process is to perpetuate the myth that it's crucial for your search engine rankings to host your website on a server with its own static IP address.
No DNS queries from XP in a IPv6 only environment? Hmmm...that seems kind of important.
At work, we use IPv6 for our VPN, and IPv4 for Internet access. All the separate LANs are using private IPv4 addressing, using NAT with static IPs on the external interfaces; OpenWRT-based routers (take a $70 ASUS router and re-flash it with Linux); and tinc VPN software to link the routers together with a private (unique local address) IPv6 subnet. Furthermore, I run a SixXS tunnel at our main server farm that lets me provide IPv6 Internet access to all the sites via the VPN: hence I have both public and private IPv6 subnets running concurrently. If you want automatic routing, you can use Quagga to set interface addresses, do route advertising, and use OSPFv3 or RIPng to manage the subnets.
http://www.openwrt.org/
http://www.tinc-vpn.org/examples/ipv6-network
http://www.wolfsheep.com/index.php/Bookmarks/IPv6
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unique_local_address
http://www.quagga.net/
Life is irony, and nothing ever goes as planned.
Use lots of lead. Much good yang.
No one wants to run a publicly available site on an IPv6 address, as that would create problems, but the client side is easy to convert, as long is there is incentive. Few customers of major consumer ISPs need real IPv4 addresses, so most ISPs can run their networks on IPv6 and require their customers to have IPv6 enabled (XP, Vista, OS X and Linux can all do this). This would free a lot of IP addresses.
Clearly the market is not embracing this solution, partly because they don't want to force their customers into a transition, but also partly because the market is based upon the cost of procurement, rather than on future availability. Procurement has been cheap up until now. It's the same reason that gas is only about $3.00 a gallon (yes, I said only), despite the anticipated future scarcity. So there are three options:
It would also be nice to see some financially independent and influential non-profit organizations make the switch, like major Ivy League universities. They're the ones who should really be leading this because they don't have the profit motive that makes businesses shy away from what appears to be a set of risky changes.
Randy is my hero.. This is one of the best presentations I've ever seen on the topic.
IPv6 is a good (or bad, depending on your perspective) example of engineering by committee. Anyone who wanted anything in the spec got it. No one was refused. And the committee was headed by a bunch of "intellectuals", without any regard for migration.
IPv6 goes over the head of most people. Just the addressing sucks. You tell the average network guy that their address has to change from 10.2.4.5 to 2001:0de8:3d4a:0011:0000:0000:abcd:ef12, their eyes glaze over and say "umm.. no thanks, I'll stick with 10.2.4.5, since it works fine".
If they would have just added an additional 4 octets to the IPv4 scheme, everyone would understand it, and it would have been adopted 10 years ago. Instead we're left with this shit.
SSL cannot be done with name-based virtual servers, or really, anything else that depends on the Host: header.
The reason is, all headers are encrypted, including the Host header. In order for the encryption to be setup, you need to know which SSL certificate should be sent. In order to know that, you need to know which hostname the client expects -- which means you need the Host header.
In short, separate SSL domains need separate IP addresses, or, at the very least, separate ports. I'm not sure how browsers would react to separate ports, but then the ISP needs to allocate one port on its NAT gateway for everyone behind it running SSL.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
So, what you're saying is that regular people will have to buy a new router. Excuse me if the prospect of spending $50 on a new router in a few years doesn't make me wet my pants.
I don't respond to AC's.
There are plenty of IPv4 addresses to go around. It's just that they're literally priceless. With no price for an IP address or the routing that goes with it, there's no market. So surprise surprise, there's a shortage!
Why don't people listen to us economists when we tell you how to solve your problems? There's plenty of evidence for what happens when you DON'T listen to us.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The IPv4 crunch has been 2 years away for at least 10 years.
By the way, the idea of reallocating parts of Class-A blocks has been technically feasible for over a decade. Say hi to CIDR
The basic problem is that the cost of migration to IPv6 falls primarily on those who already have working IPv4 networks, but all the benefits go to those who have not yet implemented their networks.
My company has a very nice class B network. Do I care if all of China has to live in one or two class A slots - not even a little bit.
If the rest of the world is forced to go to IPv6 to continue building out the the internet do I care - not even a little bit - My ISP will just have to provide a bridge between the two address spaces to keep my business.
Will I ever convert to an IPv6 network? Yeah sure, right about the same time I teach my sales force to speak Esperanto and convert all my trucks to have speedometers enumerated in the metric system.
Fortunately in the real world it is economics and not propeller-head geek measures of technical merit that govern decisions.
Which is why for most of the existing economic base IPv6 is an irrelevant non-issue. EVEN AFTER the IPv4 address space runs out - we just don't care, and don't need to care.
IPv6 is like IA64, what we need is an AMD64 equivilent!
This can be seen with nearly any resource which approaches depletion. IPv4 addresses will, inevitably, be no exception.
Method of processing duck feet
Make all file trading done over IPv6 legal under a 4 year copyright moratorium.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I do not know why since every IP4 address has exactly 1 IP6 address, the backbones could be made to run IP6, and at the edges, there would be a transparent 6 to 4 and 4 to 6 for those set of addresses. Big companies who converted to IP6 would directly continue to use their IP4 address in its IP6 format so IP4 users could communicate with them. Associated with each IP4 address is 2^16 IP6 sub addresses with the sub address 0 being the natural mapping for IP6 to IP4. If users were initially restricted only to the IP4 sub set of IP6, it still allocates each IP4 address 2^16 new IP6 address, so there would be no shortage for users with at least 1 IP address. An IP6 user (using this subset) setting up an connection would attempt to use IP6, but if the connection failed then the router would NAT the none zero sub address to IP4 subset address and try again.
The technology is here the problem is the adoption. and that can only be solved by economic means. If IPv4 addresses are running out, like petroleum, then you can expect the price of fixed IPv4 address to go up, one hand lowering the demand (like relinquish existing addresses that you don't really need) and on the other forcing more and more people to adopt IPv6. Problem solved!
I'm working on adding IPv6 support to a server package written in java. Part of what it does is use a subnet mask to discriminate LAN and WAN clients. Can I still do this if everything is IPv6? Would I just have a different subnet mask?
Are there still LAN ranges like 192.168 or 10. in IPv6? Do I still have a DHCP server on my LAN? Admittedly, I haven't spent a whole bunch of time researching this yet, but it seems like there aren't 1:1 relationships between IPv4 and IPv6 concepts.
-ec
I read a blog article a while back that explains one possible solution quite well - one that strikes me as far more elegant than the monster that is IPv6. Yes, I know there are security issues with LSRR, but they certainly aren't insurmountable. Why is nobody looking at this?
Article, verbatim
The Soapbox
New ideas in computers, networking, and technology in general
" Lightweight Multicast (LWM)
Will Multicast kill Packet Switching? "
NAT and the Failure of Source Routing
Paul Francis, in the conclusion of his 1994 Ph.D. thesis, traces the evolution of the IPv4 address scheme. After quoting a June 1978 Clark/Cohen paper (IEN 46), Francis notes:
Well, something happened here. An argument was put forth that 32 bits is enough because the address does not have to do routing - the source route can handle the rest. Clearly it was recognized that a variable length something was needed, but the source route was deemed sufficient for that, and the 32-bit address won out in the end. So, perhaps what killed IP is not that the address is too short (though probably it is), but that the ability for DNS to hand a host a source route (which it could then put in the header so that the right thing could happen in the network) was not created.
(p. 177)
Not only did the failure to fully implement source routing (in DNS) make it impossible to address into a private network, it also created the situation where NAT had to be implemented as it was.
Consider the following network:
**** Deleted by lameness filter. Click article link above. ****
H1 is on a private network. H2 is a server of some kind on the public network. The two networks are interconnected by a router with address X on the private network and address Y on the public net.
Can H1 initiate a working TCP session to H2 without NAT tables on the router? The answer is yes! H1 addresses its packet as follows. Address X is the IP Destination Address. A Loose Source and Record Route (LSRR) option is also used with a single address - H2's. What happens?
Well, the packet routes first to X on the private network, then the LSRR is processed. RFC 791:
If the address in destination address field has been reached and the pointer is not greater than the length, the next address in the source route replaces the address in the destination address field, and the recorded route address replaces the source address just used, and pointer is increased by four.
The recorded route address is the internet module's own internet address as known in the environment into which this datagram is being forwarded.
So H2's address is moved into the destination address field. Yet note carefully what else happens. The "recorded route address replaces the source address", and the "recorded route address is the... internet address as known in the environment into which this datagram is being forwarded". So address Y is placed into the LSRR option!
So H2 receives a packet addressed to it (of course), with H1's private IP address as the source address and an LSRR option listing the address Y. This is enough information to construct a return packet addressed to Y with H1 listed in an LSRR option. Now, can H1 count on H2 to do this? According to RFC 1122 (section 4.2.3.8) it can:
When a TCP connection is OPENed passively and a packet arrives with a completed IP Source Route option (containing a return route), TCP MUST save the return route and use it for all segments sent on this connection.
So far, it certainly seems like we don't need NAT! What's the problem, then? Well, consider what H1's routing table has to look like:
Destination
Good thing my DukeNukemForever/Hurd 1.0 kernel supports v6! I might need it someday!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The article claims that there is no good IPv6 test equipment. I know this to be false. The old test equipment we have in our lab at work (Adtech) handles IPv6 performance testing just fine, just as well as IPv4. Granted, we only have OC-48 adapters, but higher speeds are available. This will test for speed, dropped packets, out of order, etc. I would be very surprised if any modern test equipment did not natively support IPv6 since supporting IPv6 is basically required for any decent router, especially if you plan to sell to the enterprise or government market.
The biggest problem I see at this point in terms of equipment is that few home firewall routers support IPv6, plus it sounds like Windows XP is missing some needed functionality if it doesn't properly handle IPv6 DNS or AD. I have a small Linux network at home running dual IPv4/IPv6 and have had no issues with IPv6.
Most of the Internet backbones no longer do IP routing, instead using MPLS for making forwarding decisions. MPLS doesn't really care what protocol runs on top of it, only the routing protocols do (i.e. BGP) which do support IPv6.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
And on another note, why are you knocking XP? It does offer IPv6 support, in fact I'm looking at in my network properties right now...
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Is that PDF written in Comic Sans ?
Just say no ! http://bancomicsans.com/
Who wants to bet the IPs run out on December 21st, 2012?
The US DoD has lots and lots of addresses. They should move to IPv6 first and free up all those IPv4 networks. They have a lot of internal networks that don't need to be routed on v4 backbones, and what does would be a lot easier than a bunch of random domains mixing it up. The side benefit would be that the v4/v6 incompatibilities would give them an extra measure of security, which they could really use.
Later . . . Jim
...but sometimes you just have to punch your way through.
Not only the IPv4 IP space is running on empty, at the last AusNOG conference (a must for everybody who is into internetworking in Australia) a talk was given about the similarities and differences in the allocation of AS numbers.
:-)
Where the IP space allocation graph shows an exponential line since 1990something, the AS number allocation graph shows a linear line.
The interesting thing is that somewhere in 2010/2011, when the IPv4 IP space is running out, also the double byte AS number allocation is running out. At around the same time!
So while the big world has to deal with the IPv6 (which by now should be common knowledge and practise), the ISP world has to deal with the four byte AS numbers.
That last part isn't 100% true: If you have a double byte AS number and your BGP speaker doesn't understand four byte ASN numbers, you will see some strange things in your BGP table but everything will keep working. On the other hand, if you have been handed out a four byte AS number, you'd better make sure you got a speaker which supports four byte AS numbers
bash$
The server needs to send packets to the client..so has to know
and route the ipv6 return addresses.
The servers have to go first in my opinion. Anyone who wants to run
an internet -addressable- business will need to run dual stacks for
a while.
Once the -servers- are addressable via ipv6, then the clients will have
somewhere to "go", and they can be migrated.
Personally, the ipv6 thing seems like a fiasco, and they should have found
a way to extend ipv4. There is a lot of available space in an ipv4 header.
More than enough to solve the addressing problems.
I will not take seriously a presentation that uses Comic Sans as its primary font.
3cx.org - A truly bad website.
First, I only know a little bit about IPV6, but the important thing is that at an IPV6 address 32 bytes instead of 8, and I can conceptually view it as a string of 4 IPV4 addresses.
.0 octets). Now conceptualize 0:0:66.35.250.150:0.0.0.1. During the transition the third octet preceded by zeros is reserved for the special network of legacy IPV4 addresses. 0:0:66.35.250.150:0.0.0.0 is the IPV6 version of slashdot's address. Note that the last 4 octets are normally a network address. Imagine that later in the transition you're not so worried about IPV4 hosts, but intermediate ISPs that haven't upgraded those four zeros can be replaced by numbers effectively allowing one IPV4 address to NAT billions of hosts.
As far as I know the designers of IPV6 didn't have the forethought to make IPV6 readily encapsulateable over IPV4. There are proprietary methods. But what we need is a universal method that requires minimal change and doesn't require touching the IPV4 standard at all.
IPV6 moves away from the notion of private address blocks to something called link local, but the idea I'm expressing could co-exist with or become a revision of it. So here is my idea and apologies if I'm reinventing a wheel.
The IP address of slashdot is 66.35.250.150. Conceptualize assigning anything beginning with a bunch of zeros 0:0:0:xx.xx.xx.xx as a private network (using colons to represent a string of 4
IPV6R2 obviously would need to be standardized and the router companies have time to get updates out, but once it starts to roll it can coexist in a fashion where if I'm IP6 and you're IP6 its no longer a problem that the route between us is still IP4.
minds, get scrambled like eggs, abused and erased. Hard Hearted Alice is who you want to see.
I've been ready for years. So has my ISP. All they need to do is flip a switch. But until everyone else switches to IPv6, it's less hassle to stick with IPv4. It's sort of like HDTV. It won't take off until a sufficient number of people are capable of it.
p.s. And heaven forbid Congress go mandating IPv6 like they did with HDTV. Those guys can barely find their asses to wipe them, let alone make technical networking decisions for anyone else. The market will work this one out. The technology is ready and waiting, it just needs the demand to flip it on.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Some of us have to work with IP addresses, unlike the bureaucrats at IANA. I don't want to deal with g46:ge35hyf:35gw:g34th46j76:h34fewd23:f3g35hg45yh:54g34g34g.
There is nothing wrong with IPv4, it just needs proper management. Force the Class A hogs to release their subnets (only a few are being used), and kick the myspace/facebook/web2.0 shits off the Internet. NAT them if they really need Internet access (they don't), the only servers they're running are those of their botnet which they joined when they opened LOL FUNNY EMALE.
IPv6 should have had this:
/64 space of IPv6 address space behind it. For example, the public IPv4 address 129.65.2.119 would get the public IPv6 address block 0.0.0.0.129.65.2.119/64 for "free". Which brings me to my next point.
/64 subnet of IPv6 would give enough room for 2 layers of IPv4 NAT, at 32 bits each.
1) Easy drop-in of existing TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc. protocols. Just widen the IP address field and leave it at that. Don't try to reinvent 25 years of protocol engineering overnight. There should have been "IPv5", which would have just widened the various IP address fields in all the protocols from 4 to 16 bits, and left it at that. Existing semantics, roles, security models, etc. would be left unchanged.
Even better, this would enable trivial IPv4-to-IPv5 mapping: simply zero-extend all IPv4 address fields and you have a perfect IPv5 packet. It would be an easy 1-to-1 mapping that could be cheaply implemented in hardware. The migration to IPv5 from IPv4 could be nearly seamless. After that, new IPv6 features could be adopted whenever there is demand, so IPv5 would eventually become IPv6.
2) To encourage use, give every existing public IPv4 address its own
3) IPv6 should have kept existing syntax. Applications and protocols break, with IPv6's goofy colon-based syntax. The colon has many other longstanding meanings in software, such as port number. An easy and obvious migration path would be to keep the numbers-and-dots notation. Just add more "octets".
SMTP already uses this notation, so it will not be unfamiliar to existing IPv4 sysadmins.
4) Integrate IPv6 addressing with NAT forwarding. Each layer of NAT would correspond to simply filling in 32 more bits of IPv6's 128-bit address. The IPv6 address would simply become a "NAT path", describing how to reach machines behind multiple layers of NAT, just like directories in a filesystem. The
Let's say the public IPv4 address 129.65.2.119 is a NAT router, and it has the IPv6 address of 0.0.0.0.129.65.2.119.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0. Behind the NAT is an interior router at the private address of 192.168.1.100. Filling in 32 more bits gives us the IPv6 address of 0.0.0.0.129.65.2.119.192.168.1.100.0.0.0.0. Let's say that router at 192.168.1.100 is also a NAT. Behind that NAT is a computer with the address 169.254.1.1. Now, we have an IPv6 address of 0.0.0.0.129.65.2.119.192.168.1.100.169.254.1.1. This computer, even though it's behind 2 layers of NAT, can still address any other computer in the world that is also behind 2 layers of NAT. With some creative bit-shifting and address rewriting, an IPv6-aware IPv4 NAT could scale this up to even more layers.
5) Finally, for hardware that just can't be upgraded to process IPv6 packets, have a standard way to encapsulate an IPv6 packet in the payload portion of an IPv4 UDP packet. Perhaps reserve a "special" IPv4 address, such as 255.255.255.254, and use it for the destination, when embedding an IPv6 packet inside of an IPv4 UDP packet in this way.
This gives an upstream router the opportunity to intercept the packet and apply further processing, similar to what is now done for IPv4 SSM multicast. The upstream router could notice the packet being sent to that special nonexistent address, and strip out the IPv6 packet from the payload, and send the IPv6 packet on its way. The process would also work in reverse, so that replies could be received.
I would appreciate responses on why these ideas wouldn't work. Or, would they indeed work?
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
You have to create a demand for ipV6.
If we pass a law that forbids porn on IPv4, we'll see a rapid increase in the use of to IPv6.
Privacy is terrorism.
I recommend not trying to take away DISA's allocation. If you like breathing.
Why can't we just compromise and all use IPv5?
As randy bush says, IPv6 implementation will INCREASE NAT usage for the next 10 years.
Windows, including XP, does not have DNSv6 support.
Really? Thats what you are going with? That is what? IOS code 11.X ?
Cisco IOS NAT has lagged behind the crappy residential home routers. They just did not drop the address port states fast enough.
Besides the which, they were only mapping the external connection to source ( the external gateway ) destination port. which gave them 40,000 or so connections total. When they finally started mapping it to the whole flow, including destination address, this issue went away.
NAT is not a solution from the internet core perspective however.
IPv6 only sites can not connect to ipV4 only sites. So The fact that China's universities have gone ipV6 just means that they are okay not talking to the world. Or they are NATing.
Its written by Randy Bush. He knows something about internet routing. Then check and see if your core routers are actually doing IPv6 in ASICs. Don't ask the marketing rep or the account executive, ask someone who knows and can speak honestly.
Now take a second to think about this....
Windows active directory, when you take the time to watch the protocol usage, depends on name resolution for just about everything. I would have to say that 30-60% of the lookups still use WINS - netbios over tcp - name service. Plug that into IPv6 why don't you.
About half of my time is spent convincing Microsoft Experts that it isn't the god damn network. I am eager to project these mistakes into an IPv6 future.
but the question is whether that's what's really happening.
I mean, yeah, they want to build those as cheap as possible to get profit up, but has anyone done a survey of the actually density of domains per IP address? Or of how many different addresses are being used by those parking sites?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
There are a lot of things we do on the net that don't _look_ like we are running servers.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
... that is, enough ports if they really wanted to.
Somehow, I think the tools to handle the allocation of ports per bridge would be more expensive to develop and put in place than simply biting the bullet and rolling out IPV6, however.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Let's change the IPv4 addresses to look like this:
;-¥
123.32.1.23:0.0.0.0 is a host.
123.23.1.23:255.255.255.255 is a router.
123.23.1.23:1-254.1-254.1-254.1-254:0.0.0.0 is a host.
Cool idea, huh?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
My Japanese ISP does not offer IPv6 last I asked. Nothing on their site mentions it at this time, near as I can tell.
(I could e-mail them again and ask if things have changed over the last four years since I last asked, though.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
at it again
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The solution is simple. DYN-DNS. Half the people that have static IP's don't need them. Everyone gets them from their ISP for things like, home servers, security camera systems, office computers, etc. The price of static IP's will go up and the alternative will be to use DYN-DNS services to access your networks. WEB Hosting prices will also go up, no more lame websites lingering around. The Internet is filled with waste and garbage, time to clean it up.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
So when can I reach Slashdot over IPv6?
This thread is a little old but I just wanted to confirm this.
My company has student housing. We have 76 students in one residence, with about 50 computers between them. They all use the internet like students do: WoW, p2p, skype, and of course web browsing. One kid was even serving a web page for a while. They are all hooked in to one generic 4-port router (it was kind of expensive at 80) that is hooked to four generic 24 port switches. It is a standard ADSL line at 1024mbps.
We have not had a single complaint.
No, what he's saying is that your nice, $20/month broadband connection will suddenly increase to $50 a month.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
Some corporate business still think they need a class C (or worse, class B) address space for their systems. Firewalls and NAT routing these days eliminates the need for some greedy corporate tycoon to grab all those IP_ADDRs. If corporations (and individuals to a less extent) were more conservative, it would be a very long time before we ran out of IP4 space.
This is such an old discussion that nobody will read this anyway, but here goes ...
When the crunch hits, IPv4 addresses will be accounted differently, no longer will they be seen as a free resource that earns $10/month, they'll be seen as a cost center that needs to have a margin associated with it. So if the company has to start paying even $1/month per address, they'll pass that cost on to the end users as a higher monthly fee.
You are correct in what it you say, but you are totally wrong as far as the "big picture" of charging for addresses is concerned.
If everyone has to pay $1/mo (i.e. $3+ billion/mo) for an IPv4 address, 99% of them would be returned. Even if everyone had to pay $1/yr for an IP address, there wouldn't be an IPv4 shortage for 10 or 20 years.
And I do mean everyone. You think that MIT or IBM would pay $16 million per month for their "legacy" IP assignment? I don't think so!
Just don't give this money to ICANN, IANA, the RIRs, or anyone like that. That would corrupt those organizations even more than they are corrupted now.
ICANN and the internet registries should start charging maintenance fees.
For a small charge of, say, 1 dollar a year per IP address, you get the privilege of having a routeable IP address, officially recognized by the IANA and all the global internet registries.
You quit paying your maintenance fee, boom, you lose your address, and it goes to someone else.
This token amount would, as a result of being very small for a single IP address, but large for address space hogs, encourage economy and get them to give up the masses of IPs that they're squatting on.
Also, we need to move away from this "ownership" paradigm. Routing protocols like BGP greatly benefit from aggregation, which, in turn, can be facilitated by heirarchial numbering schemes. Ownership and squatting kill those.