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China To Run Out of IPv4 Addresses In 830 Days
JagsLive writes "China is running out of IP addresses unless it makes the switch to IPv6. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, under the current allocation speed, China's IPv4 address resources can only meet the demand of 830 more days and if no proper measures are taken by then, new Chinese netizens will not be able to gain normal access to the Internet. Li Kai, director in charge of the IP business for CNNIC's international department, says that if a netizen wants to get access to the Internet, an IP address will be necessary to analyze the domain name and view the pages. At present, most of the networks in China use IPv4 addresses. As a basic resource for the Internet, the IPv4 addresses are limited and 80% of the final allocation IP addresses have been used."
When your WHOLE COUNTRY is behind a firewall? NAT the hell out of that! Flatten it to a /8 network in 10.0.0.0 and put it all behind one public IP. Problem solved!
Netizen is really stupid word, we really don't need more buzzwords.
I predict that we'll see China begin to use IPv6 addresses before most other people. Why?
Granted, I'm no fan of China's human rights policies. But it definitely has an advantage in terms of adopting IPv6. Hopefully, when China switches protocols, it'll catalyze the rest of the world to do so as well.
If 25 companies (are there even that many with /8s?) gave back their entire allocation, that would still only add 10% to the pool. That might buy a little time (a year, if we're at 80% and have two years left), but it's hardly going to solve the problem.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
NAT is not a solution. It's a huge, gigantic clusterfuck of a problem. Some people only started their careers after NAT was widespread, so they can't imagine how wonderful the world is without it. The internet is much simpler when you can assume that all nodes can directly address all other nodes.
Look: this is what we've done.
In the beginning, each endpoint of a TCP (or UDP) connection looked like this:
[octet][octet][octet][octet][16-bit port]
[(------- host-------------)(--service--)
Each octet was routed hierarchically, and the port acted as an additional level of routing within a single node.
With CIDR, the model moved to this:
[32-bit opaque address][16-bit port]
(-------host----------)(--service--)
This change didn't hurt anything, aside from an increase in router complexity. Allowed the 32-bit address space to be used much more efficiently.
Now with the IP address shortage, the situation looks like this:
[48-bit address]
(----?---------)
Note how we've lost the distinction between host and service and smushed them all together into one huge opaque number. We've caused ourself lots of problems with this:
These days, instead of saying "connect to mydomain.foo.cx", for example, you have to say "connect to mydomain.foo.cx at port 12345". That's out of band address information, and should never be needed. Imagine if DNS only gave you the first three octets an IP address, and every application requires you type in the last one in manually. That's what the world is like today!
Not a week goes by where someone doesn't trot out a new statistic on how P2P uses the vast majority of bandwidth on the internet. And you suggest NAT will be the solution to limited IP addresses.
*sigh*
stop saying "netizens".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Why is everyone in the comments talking about various steps (reallocating large blocks, more widespread NAT, etc.) that would allow us to push back IPv6?
It seems that we very close to the point where every device supports IPv6 (Vista adoption is helping this) but just isn't using it. Let's start turning it on. What better way to help the adoption than by having users who are IPv6 only complaining?
-bugg
Why can't some of the owners of /8 address spaces return them back to be re-allocated?
For example, HP owns 15.0.0.0 through 16.0.0.0 (~33m ip addresses) can't they get by on just ONE class A network?
Apple owns 17/8
MIT own 18/8
US Postal Service 56/8.
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/
Do all these companies need to have ALL of their devices on publicly routable IP addresses? From a security standpoint, I would hope not. Odd since IBM, a company much larger than MIT and Apple can get by on just one /8, and I'm having trouble believing that HP requires 2 /8 networks.
We talk about making our datacenters "green" by consuming less power, there's got to be an equivalent for consuming fewer public IP addresses.
I've just finished re-IPing our datacenter (~5000 servers), not to 'release IP addresses back, but to undo the damage done by years of seemingly randomly assigning IP addresses to servers in our datacenter. Yes it's a pain, but so is any form of cleaning up your datacenter (cabling for example).
A year is a lot of time. Think how much cheaper computers/routers get in a year. That's a lot of expense saved if they can delay switching over for a year.
in a world where everything including your fridge is connected to teh interweb 24h a day, 7 days a week, we will quickly run into a situation where no more IPv4 address can be assigned to a new machine
And tell me again why my fridge will be on a public IP, rather than the 192.168.1.xxx address my Best Buy $49.99 Linksys router will give it?
Even better, explain to me why I, as Joe Sixpack will *need* my fridge on a public IP where every flaw and exploit will be passed directly to it, rather than dropped at the NAT box?
Or better still, explain why a small business with 60 users should have every last user on a public IP?
Or why a college or university needs to put every last workstation, printer, AP, and toaster on a public IP address?
NAT exists because NAT works. No, it is not the be all end all for any perceived IPv4 woes, but there is a metric assload of stuff out there with a public IP that either should be, or desperately NEEDS to be on a 10.xxx.xxx.xxx network.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
So you can connect to your fridge and see if your milk has gone off from outside your home? NAT does not give security. A firewall gives security, and most NAT devices also do firewalling. If you don't want your fridge to be accessible from anywhere outside your network, or only from a set of VPN locations, then you can easily configure your firewall to block inbound connections to it (which is likely the default anyway).
Does your small business with 60 employees want to use IP telephony? In this case, each PC (or each telephone) needs a public IP. You can get away with routing this at the application layer, but why bother when it doesn't actually gain you anything?
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Even better, explain to me why I, as Joe Sixpack will *need* my fridge on a public IP where every flaw and exploit will be passed directly to it, rather than dropped at the NAT box?
What you want is a firewall not a NAT. A firewall will protect you just the same and allow people to initiate communication as YOU desire.
Or better still, explain why a small business with 60 users should have every last user on a public IP?
There are quite a few examples why this is important but here's one. Why can't all students / businesses have a public IP with an exposed port for VoIP? Why do VoIP products have to have complicated NAT traversal software that doesn't always work and at the very least just adds useless overhead.
It's called a firewall. Set one up and stop spreading FUD.
A year is a lot of time. Think how much cheaper computers/routers get in a year. That's a lot of expense saved if they can delay switching over for a year.
Its simpler if people just started accepting that IPv6 is going to happen and adjust accordingly. For me its like having to accept Y2K was going to happen and acting accordingly. Believe me its much simpler to code the applications than go through the politics, and possibly technical issues, of getting someone to give back a block they don't appear to be using.
Get your ISP and your router manufacturer to provide you an IPv6 solution. That too is probably not easy, but if we all start making noise then they will start doing something - hopefully.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Sure, in the same sense that crushing an airliner into a cube makes it useless for terrorists. NAT breaks the internet, and when you break something, it's useless because it's broken.
You can filter packets with a firewall without doing any NAT at all. In fact, your life would be a lot easier without NAT. There would be no need for configuring ports. There would be no need for mapping and configuring and making and unmaking.
You'd plug things in, and they'd just work. Globally. You can allow connections to your fridge from work, or from anywhere. A firewall could do that. The fridge itself could do it. But you'd still be connecting to your fridge, and not some random port on some arbitrary gateway machine somewhere.
Going with your fridge analogy, why should it be a bad thing for a grocery store to connect to all the fridges it knows about in order to tell them about new products? Why this artificial distinction between "inbound" and "outbound" traffic?
I'll answer your question with another:
Why not?
Seriously. This whole "X doesn't NEED to be on the internet" is a ridiculous argument. It's simply saying "oh, having a PC and computer type equipment on the internet should be enough for anybody". The whole point of this internet thing is innovation. Sure, a fridge doesn't NEED to be on the internet. Unless I want it to have some functionality that requires internet connectivity. Same with my computer. It functions just fine, and doesn't NEED to be on the internet.
And why is "fridge can reorder beer for you" drivel? Is there some reason that a fridge SHOULDN'T reorder your beer? Sure, it's not a vital function, but neither most of the stuff that our technology does. Again, this is what innovation and technology is all about - improving the standard of living, making this easier, etc.
That's a consequence of the way things have evolved, not a characteristic of the essential nature of things.
The only reason we have these NAT boxes is because ISPs didn't give each customer a whole bunch of IPs. If they had, then we'd have the same boxes, but call them firewalls.
You are trying to justify something based on its existence. That's what we call a circular argument.
From such statements does infamy arise.
How do you possibly know whether or not it might be useful to have independent addressability for orders of magnitude more devices than have it now? Have you already invented all the things that this might bring about, and pronounced them useless? What a remarkably shortsighted view.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
When discussing putting every device online with a distinct IP (especially IPv6), I've never seen anyone mention the ISP element. What happens when you all of the sudden need to add several dozen new devices to you internet connection?
What I mean is, ISPs (at least, U.S. ISPs) right now are trying everything possible to charge money. They charge for every single static IP, small bumps in speed, etc. I remember when it they wouldn't even talk to you over the phone if you had a router in place.
So, imagine that every device expects to be statically placed online. Now, all of the sudden, to use your Wii or PS3, access your fridge's web server, log into your coffee pot, or update your in-home automation and security system, you have to pay your ISP a small add-on monthly fee.
My point here is that NAT or an equivalent cannot and will not go away. The overwhelming majority of devices just don't need open web access. Instead, these devices should be routed through some sort of obscuring and securing device. If a home-owner needs to access their fridge, they should first log into their home-portal, which provides access to their in-home network.
Besides, someone else mentioned the store sending advertisements to my fridge. Thanks but no thanks. I'll just visit your website if I'm interested in the current ads.