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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."
Try the whole world. According to this counter, the world will be out of IPv4 addresses in 768 days.
Sounds like it will be easier than ever to ring the Wong number!
Smivs on the intertubes!
Do any Chinese citizens even have "normal" 'net access now? Thought NAT was used heavily, not to mention the GFWOC
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
To get a quick infusion of 700 billion IP4 addresses -- NOW!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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!
Or will they just open up reserved addresses or something stupid like that?
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
Netizen is really stupid word, we really don't need more buzzwords.
A: Because it breaks the flow of a message.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
.
C'mon HP, be a good netizen and give back the bulk of those IP addresses. Try using NAT instead of hoarding IP addresses that others so desperately need.
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.
Slashdot runs it's 15th story about IP addresses running out "real soon now". The first was something like 5 years ago :)
These stats ignore the fact that there are huge available allocations that can go behind NAT's. An ISP can NAT big chunks of its user network. Charging even a modest amount per IP would free up huge numbers of IPs. There are abandoned blocks (companies out of business) and wildly oversized blocks (MIT etc).
Plus, we've been hearing these stories for years. The idea that the internets resources are going to become ipv6 anytime soon is unlikly. So folks are going to figure out a way to manage the existing pool, where there is lots of room for improved efficiency.
Fun to keep on reading these stories... they're always written as breaking news :)
They're even running out of RFC 1918 addresses.
the LHC will end it quicker than that. They estimate some 90 days until they've got their repairs done ;)
--- Eat my sig.
Impose a one IP address per family rule...
Task Mangler
Seriously their government is hell bent on controlling what goes into and out of that nation and what better way to do that than by forcing people to use a proxy..
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Pease porridge hot
Pease porride cold
Pease porridge in the pot
Nine days old!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
IP4 doesn't have enough addresses, of course a managers solution is to put of the inevitable so that it happens on someone elses watch rather then taking the time we got now to develop and implement a solution.
IF pushing IP6 doesn't work in the roughly 2 years remaining THEN we can use the buffer of under-used blocks as a last reserve. if we use the reserves now, and do nothing then we still have the same problem, just a bit further away but this time with no reserves remaining and no work chance of it being solves in time.
You should run for president, you would do well with your solutions.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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!
Heck, they already firewall everybody -- why not just break IPs up into NATted subnets? The 10.x.x.x range should give them enough room for awhile, right?
Hmm.... 16,777,216 IP addresses divided by 1,300,000,000 citizens.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Carly Fiorina's ego. It's so big that it was necessary to support all of her ego's operations. If it grows any more, the IPv6 address space will be screwed as well.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So the world runs out of addresses before China runs out?
The world will run out of new blocks to allocate (as in "254.xxx.yyy.zzz"), before China gives out all addresses in the allocated blocks it has (as in "www.254.254.254").
Nonetheless, IPv4 can only provide a little lower than 253^4 different addresses. What makes it worse is that it's allocated in chunks (some chunks are reserved like the 127.x.y.z family - other addresses may be free but land in a range which is allocated to some company and thus can't be used by your computer).
Thus even if some providers use dynamic IP (only those machine which are connected have an IP address - thus an ISP needs a chunk only as big as the number of simultaneously connected users, not as the total number of subscriber), and lot of router use NAT (only 1 single IP address is visible on ther internet. all the machine are visible through this address and use a private address on the internal network),
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 :
- the ISP has ran out of addresses in its chunk because there are more simultaneous connection (because everyone stays perpetually connected) that there are free address in the chunk (china will reach this point in 2-3 years)
- and there are no more new free chunk to allocate for the providers (all are already either reserved like the 10.*.*.* and 192.168.*.* range, or have already been allocated to others) thus now way to give more chunks with more IP to the ISPs (the world will reach that point too in about 2 years).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
stop saying "netizens".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
ISPs will not be able to oversell their DHCP pool. Back in the days of dial-up, yes, but now that every broadband ISP installs a router/modem that is on 24 hours a day not a chance. Most people will turn off or suspend a computer when it's not in use, but will never do the same for their router.
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
We've only used half the available numbers.
Just start using negative numbers: -248.100.-97.-201
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
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).
Ordinary users of the IPv6 Internet should be allocated as a minimum two /64 subnets. One /64 subnet would be for a private LAN network and the other /64 subnet would be for a public facing DMZ network. The DMZ network would be useful for any kind of reachability which only selected people can access content. IPv6 capable VoIP PBXs would be especially useful here like Asterisk and Freeswitch. Imagine the possibilities of assigning every phone call or user its own IPv6. This should elimiate VoIP spam.
Other notes: Point to point links should be a /126, not a /64. Businesses of differing sizes don't need a full /48. This would be like giving out blocks of IPv4 Class A addresses all over again. The size of the allocated IPv6 for a business should match their real size and needs. Applications and operating systems need to be more IPv6 aware.
Peak IP4 is a myth; there are still plenty of addresses buried in the Canadian tar sands. However, in the short term, the only solution is to lift the ban on coastal drilling for IP4 addresses.
IPv6 allows addresses to be assigned very sparsely, which simplifies routing tables a lot. Back in the early days of IPv4, you could look at the first octet of an address and make a routing decision. The next router would look at the next octet, and so on, and so you only needed 256 routing table entries in each one. The network was conducted as a tree. You'd send a packet to the local router, which would say 'this isn't in my local network, send it up a tier' until it got to one that could start sending it down again.
With CIDR, you stopped being able to do this. Addresses were allocated in blocks of 256, so you had to look at the first three octets to make a routing decision. This meant you need up to 16,777,216 routing table entries. With IPv6, this is no longer required, and you can go back to having the IP addresses roughly corresponding to the network topology.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
The refrigerator is a poor example, but other appliances and home HVAC systems could realize significant energy savings by communicating with each other, and by being controlled remotely over the internet (or some other means).
There are a lot of interesting scenarios: if you had real-time, fluctuating power pricing, you might want to have appliances change their energy consumption or other settings in response to their cost. Only run some appliances when the spot price is below $0.15/kwh, for example.
Or even simpler, if you have a peak-load factor as a component of your bill, devices could communicate with each other to ensure the total draw at any one time doesn't exceed some predetermined maximum. Different appliances would each have a priority, and would have to shut down to accommodate higher-priority draws. (E.g.: the clothes dryer would shut off if you turned on the electric stove or microwave, because it would have a lower priority -- unless you were really obsessive about not having wrinkled clothes, I suppose, in which case you could set it the other way around.)
The two could be combined, as well: once you have the infrastructure in place, you could set up whatever rules you wanted, balancing preferences for certain services against costs, and prioritizing certain services at various times. It wouldn't be hard to produce detailed reports of what each appliance/service was costing to operate, and how new rules would affect costs based on past usage patterns. (There's the potential for a lot of complexity in the control system, but to a user it might seem very simple on the surface.)
Also, there's a wide range of appliances that really only need to run when people are in the house (or just before they enter the house) but tend to run continuously because it's a PITA to run them based on inflexible timers: HVAC, lighting, water heaters, possibly even water pressure-pumps. Devices would only be turned on when necessary for another device, or a user need was anticipated. I could easily imagine a system that was plugged into an online calendar and controlled this in a way that hid it from the user as much as possible. Heck, if you had a PDA with GPS, you wouldn't have to do anything.
The driving force behind "home automation" up until now has mostly been the geek factor of controlling all your lights/appliances/whatevers from a single point, but I think in the future, energy savings and integration will be the selling point. Since it seems unlikely that we'll really make significant inroads on alternative sources of energy before we start to run low on petroleum, there's a non-trivial chance that energy may become staggeringly expensive. I could easily see a future where the running costs of energy-intensive appliances greatly exceed -- even to the point of triviality -- their purchase price.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
What is IPv6, 128-bit address space? That is what, 16 bytes?
Worse case in decimal (I added the dashes so *I* could make sure I typed it right :-)
216:126:59:03-58:95:58:32-126:43:55:129-59:59:59:1
Worse case in hex (same deal).
FA:FA:FA:FA-12:55:43:BA-55:DA:CC:DB-89:A1:C1:01
Basically, you are boned :-) Maybe we need a different number system that is like Base64 instead of Base16? Heck... why not just base64 encode the IP address. Base64 is what, A-Z, a-z, 0-9,+,=? A Base64 encoded IPv6 address is just:
Az.
Or make it Base32 instead so you can be case insensitive (A-Z, 0-9 and only drop a couple easy to mix up characters like i, l and o to get to 32 chars). A Base32 IPv6 is:
A1Y2.
You could even break out subnets with Base32:
A1Y:2/96 (subnet mask ZZZ0)
So yeah... why didn't they go Base64 or Base32 instead of Base16?
"Just how lazy are you?
As much as technology will allow.
"But this one goes to 11!"
your examples are wrong.
HEX: 4 bits per byte, takes 32 chars to encode IPv6 Address
Base32: 5 bits per byte, takes 26 char to encode an IPv6 address
Base64: 6 bits per byte, takes 22 chars to encode an IPv6 address
You can see the return on investment is pretty small for base32 and base64, since it costs you the transparency of the output.
try again.
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.