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IPv4 Will Not Die In 2010

darthcamaro writes "A couple of years ago, the big shots at IANA (that's the people that handle internet addressing) issued a release stating that the IPv4 address space was likely to be gone by 2010. Here we are in 2010 and guess what, IPv4 with its 4.3 billion addresses will NOT be all used up this year. In fact there could be another two years worth of addresses still left at this point. 'We're at about 10.2 percent (IPv4 address space) remaining globally,' John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN said. 'At our current trend rate we've got about 625 days before we will not have new IPv4 addresses available. We're still handling IPv4 requests from ISPs, hosting companies and large users for IPv4 address space, but that's a very short time period.'"

32 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. IPv4 doesn't die by rvw · · Score: 3, Insightful

    IPv4 doesn't die - it just runs out of available addresses.

    1. Re:IPv4 doesn't die by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 3, Funny

      Old programmers don't die, they just use an exploit to induce an overflow in the "time left to live" counter that runs the Reaper's scheduler.

      --
      It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
      Be yourself no matter what they say
    2. Re:IPv4 doesn't die by Retric · · Score: 4, Informative

      One of the quick and dirty ways to continuing to use IPv4 is to have some of the huge chunks of the address space given back. Do FORD, MIT, Apple, IBM, etc each need 256^3 addresses? (http://xkcd.com/195/) IPv4 has almost 256^4 or around 4 billion IP's that's almost one IP per person on the planet and plenty to last a *LONG* time.

    3. Re:IPv4 doesn't die by Retric · · Score: 3, Interesting

      IP's are given away and there is no reason to give them back so of course there is a lot of demand and we are "running out". But don't think just because IANA runs out of IP's you will be unable to get new ones. They will just come with a price tag. It's a classic land grab, and people that got large chunks of IP space are going to start selling them as soon as there is no free competition.

  2. IPv4 not dying... by gandhi_2 · · Score: 3, Funny

    IPv4 not dying... Enterprise Networking Planet confirms it!

    That just doesn't have the same ring to it. ):

  3. Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing by Kenshin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Another two years? Good, now we can all can put off panicking for another two years and not do anything to resolve this in the meantime.

    --

    Does it make you happy you're so strange?

    1. Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Worse than that, we'll continue to deal with the issues NAT causes, and I'm sure the various money grubbing ISP's will charge even more for additional IPs as we run out.

    2. Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing by Dragonslicer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Issues that NAT causes? Like shielding n00bs from the wilds of the internet?

      NAT is a blessing. It allows people to access the net without being exposed to it.

      Someone should write some software that can be put on a router that would offer the same protection without also causing all the problems that come with NAT. It would be like this large barrier that burns up any unauthorized data that tries to get by.

      Hopefully a good marketing person can think up a decent name for such a thing.

    3. Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing by Hadlock · · Score: 3, Funny

      How about incinerator pit? Please contact me so I can get you in touch with my venture capitalists' financing division.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    4. Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing by Abcd1234 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Someone should write some software that can be put on a router that would offer the same protection without also causing all the problems that come with NAT. It would be like this large barrier that burns up any unauthorized data that tries to get by.

      Yeah yeah! You mean like that, you know, wall-thing they put in cars between the passengers and the engine compartment in a car. You know, the thing that's meant to stop people from being burned by some sort of, like, fire or something? Man, what a great idea!

    5. Re:Panic Averted - Resume Doing Nothing by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Funny

      Grandparent:
      It would be like this large barrier that burns up any unauthorized data that tries to get by.

      Parent:
      You mean like that, you know, wall-thing they put in cars between the passengers and the engine compartment in a car.

      Ah, and the difference between people who's visualization of a "fire wall" comes from real life, versus Advanced Dungeons and Dragons becomes clear. ;)

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
  4. Trends by mrpacmanjel · · Score: 4, Funny

    "...At our current trend rate we've got about 625 days before we will not have new IPv4 addresses available..."

    I think this:http://www.xkcd.com/605/ sums it up

    1. Re:Trends by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, this sums it up. If you'd bother to read this or an estimation done by someone else, then you'd know that the uncertainty is less than 3 months with high confidence. Of course the 625 days thing is bullshit, but saying 1.5 years +-3 months is probably what will happen, unless something really major changes don't start happening in the IPv4 process, which I wouldn't say is too likely based on the fact that it would require immediate global cooperation (see how well that went in Copenhagen).

      --
      It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
      Be yourself no matter what they say
  5. Re:What about the domain parking, tasting, sniping by Kufat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Domain squatters and the like use one IP (and one server) for thousands and thousands of domains. They're parasites but they're not using anything like a significant fraction of the available IP space.

  6. Whats the point? A three year old estimate is off by Troy+Roberts · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Big F...ing deal! How many predictions are accurate for three or more years? The original prediction was made in May, 2007 and current prediction has slipped the date from December 2, 2010 to November 18, 2012 not quite a 2 years. I challenge anyone to find accurate predictions that are 3 1/2 years old.

    We need to be moving to IPV6 as quickly as possible. We may have a bit longer than was predicted 3 1/2 years ago. The thing that is scary is have we made much progress in moving to IPV6 in the last 3 1/2 year? I think not much. So, whatever the actual exhaustion dates are for IPV4 address. We can be certain that we are 3 1/2 years closer than we were and we have done almost nothing to prepare.

  7. Guess we'll just going to have to have... by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...another financial crisis. Because that's the reason there was a slump in allocation rates. The current best projection for IANA pool exhaustion is Sep/Oct 2011. Without the financial crisis that would have been end of 2010. The IANA guys would have been dead on, if not for a once in a 100 years financial event.

    The tone of the submission is really silly. There wasn't 4.3B allocatable addresses in the first place. Out of the 256 "/8s" only 219.914 /8 is theoretically usable, even before subtracting the legacy allocations. The summary makes it sound like it was a doom-and-gloom prediction that didn't happen to be true, but that's not the case.

    Also, it's "not the next 2 or 3 years", based on the available number of addresses 1.5 years for the IANA pool and 2,5 years are hard bars until RIRs (regional internet registries) run out.

    --
    It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
    Be yourself no matter what they say
  8. Re:Could last another 10 years... by EyelessFade · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nothing new there. The university I work at have a /16 network. Everything has its own ip, even projectors. And by God thats how its supposed to work

  9. The adaptation of IPv6 will free IPv4 addresses by SlOrbA · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I predict that 2012 we will still have available IPv4 addresses.

    This will happen because some IPv4 addresses will be reallocated as client-side doesn't need IPv4 addresses in IPv6 to access IPv4 resources. So IPv6 adaptation it self will slow the need to migrate to IPv6 as singular Internet Protocol.

  10. STUPID by mc1138 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Whether or not the issue will be forced, the problem is that for most of the developing world they already are either running out or pretty damn close. Because of this, if the US doesn't jump on the band wagon we will continue to be outpaced by countries like China that are already neck deep in rolling out IPv6. This isn't a matter of when, just if, and really ought to be done gradually, but quickly, rather than wait till a moment to be forced. I encourage anyone that can to move as quick as they can towards this rather than sit and wait and watch the world pass them by.

  11. Re:Could last another 10 years... by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...if we actually went after those who currently hold "monster" /8 and even /16 blocks that aren't doing squat (pun intended) with them.

    When the IPv4 addresses run out, those "monster" holders will be doing something with them. Selling them.

    The "monster" holders are big IT players, and they would never give away something that they see could be a valuable asset in the future.

    Go knock at HP's door, with a bowl in your hand, and say: "Please, Sir, can I have some more IPv4 addresses?"

    "More? You want MORE!"

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  12. Re:Not entirely true by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's also the point at which the market for IP addresses opens, and companies start selling subnets.

    No. Repeat after me, there is no market in IPv4 addresses. The current rule is that when a RIR requests a block from IANA that would bring the IANA pool below 5 /8s, then every RIR gets one last /8 from the "final five". Then IANA is done and the RIRs have whatever addresses they have left in their unused pool. For AfrNIC it'll last decades, for APNIC/ARIN it's curtains in about a year.

    There is no market in IPv4. There never will be, because reclaiming addresses is too hard and routing can't handle it atm (routing too small blocks). Let's switch to IPv6 already, for fuck's sake, we'll have to do that anyway even if a miracle happens, technical problems get worked out and someone sets up an IPv4 market, about 6 months after.

    --
    It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
    Be yourself no matter what they say
  13. Re:Trends (625 days vs 1.5 years +/- 3 mo) by jcurran · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You're correct... I'm careful to point out the uncertainty when doing the interviews, but reporters tend to lock onto the IPv4 depletion countdown number regardless...

  14. In other news.... by idiotnot · · Score: 4, Informative

    IPX won't die in 2010, either.

    But, in all seriousness, there's a few things to remember here.
    1. The v4 address space will be exhausted in the foreseeable future.
    2. Reclaiming large blocks only delays that inevitability by a few months.
    3. With a few exceptions, modern, supported OSes (Windows [2003, 2008, Vista, 7], GNU/Linux, all of the BSDs, OS X) support IPv6 perfectly.
    4. Most of the critical applications support IPv6 perfectly.
    5. The big holdup on the consumer side has been with the ISPs. The DOCSIS 3.0 roll-out is ongoing in many places.
    6. The US government has mandated it. The compliance date was in 2008 for all of the Federal agencies on their backbones. It's just a matter now of getting ISP access to those sites, and configuring lower-level systems.

    The luddite attitude here about this is amazing. If you're really all that concerned about it, and don't want to focus too much on the nuts-and-bolts, here's some advice: Learn BIND. Setting up your resolvers properly will spare you headaches.

    I use IPv6 every day. I get lots of e-mail over IPv6 (netbsd and freebsd mailing lists, to name just a couple). I enjoy being able to ssh to all of my machines at home directly. It's here. Evaluate your crap, and see what's not going to work. Plan to replace that stuff. Most of it probably will need replacing by the time you get assigned a /64 or /48 by your ISP, anyway. This isn't rocket science. /rant

  15. Re:World endsz in 2012 anyway by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    Will his website be at address 255.255.255.254?

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  16. Re:Increase in domain value? by petermgreen · · Score: 3, Informative

    why can't all little-visited domains be on virtual hosts and share their IP address with many others?
    Many can but as of right now if you want to use ssl/tls you pretty much need your own IP.

    with ssl/tls the server does not have the http request at the time the connection is negotiated and certificates checked so it can't use the name from it to decide what certificate to present.

    You can in principle have multiple domains on one certificate but it makes the certificate management far more of an administrative PITA (essentially the host would have to apply for a certificate on behalf of all the domains they host on an ip and get a new one every time a domain needed to be moved between machines)

    There is a ssl/tls extention which tells the server which domain is being requested during the ssl handshake so it can send out different certificates for different domains. Unfortunately the built in ssl support in xp doesn't support it (both IE and chrome use the windows built in ssl support, firefox doesn't).

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  17. Re:Could last another 10 years... by FlyingBishop · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The projector is mounted on the ceiling, and your laptop is on your desk. You wirelessly hook up the projector as an external monitor.

    You're in a lab, and your media server is in your room. You hook up and start streaming music. The possibilities are endless.

    All sorts of things Just Work so much better with ipv6.

  18. Re:2012 by jack2000 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah if only there was a way to assign names to these hard to remember numbers, universal names that anyone can use to get to that exact ip address that they wanted. Dumb people will use the name system all the time!
    OH I KNOW! We'll name it DUMB NAME SYSTEM! DNS for short!

  19. Re:2012 by petermgreen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes there are a lot of ipv6 addresses, however looking at the total size of a 128 bit address space is very misleading as ipv6 addresses are designed to be allocated in a more heirachical manner and designed to support stateless autoconfiguration for clients. Originally end sites were meant to be allocated a /48 though ripe now seems to be pushing for smaller allocations to smaller end sites.

    Plus only 2::/3 is assigned to the ipv6 internet with other address space being reserved for other purposes.

    Those figures would give us 2^45 end sites, this should be enough that we don't run out of addresses any time soon but it's a lot less than the ammount people assume from just looking at the number of bits in the IP.

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  20. I foresee a temporary solution. by TrisexualPuppy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are going to be lots of little solutions that will stretch out IPv4 for a while.

    One that I came up would be to offer a financial incentive to reclaim unused blocks of addresses. Ten or fifteen years ago, IP address space was handed out like candy. You could get a class C block readily, and class B blocks just needed a little justification. I did some contract work in the late 90s for a company that I still keep up with, and they have a few entire C nets in their possession and not in use. Now how do we get these back? There is going to be demand for IP addresses, and as the supply becomes more and more limited, that demand will make people desperate.

    So why not let people who already have address space sell what they have? It does reward unrightfully holding onto stuff, but if these addresses are needed, then hey!

  21. How long until /. is IPv6? by wowbagger · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Once again, I'll ask a simple question:

    How long until it is possible to pull up the main page on Slashdot, using nothing but IPv6 packets?

    IMHO, every time one of these "OMFG IPv4 gonna run out RSN!!!1!11!" stores hits the front page, the Slashcrew should have to state where THEY are in becoming IPv6, and what is preventing them from doing so already.

  22. Re:There's plenty of addresses left. Don't panic. by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You could easily use 64 bit addresses in IPV4 by sticking the rest of the source and destination addresses in the options field of the packet. But why? We would still need to upgrade all the routers and software to work with the new system, except we would be upgrading to a hack not a solution, and we would be ignoring the solution that has already been implemented in many computers around the world. As likely as not, IPv6 already works with the computer you are holding, it just needs to be turned on.

    IPv6 is the way to go, and everyone is already heading that way. By the time IPv4 addresses run out, the biggest difficulty may be explaining to your friends how to fix their internet that is no longer working and they don't know why.

    --
    Qxe4
  23. It's about routing.. by tempest69 · · Score: 3, Informative
    If we let these companies sell off small chunks all over the place, you have routing weirdness; as companies will need to aggregate a bunch of small chunks. Then you have all of these small addresses that need their own entries in routing tables where a large address range would make the routing easier. And changing the routing tables becomes more of a mess, and the protocols (ala RIP, OSPF) need to work harder, causing more overhead. If properly implemented, IPV6 would prevent these kind of issues, as the address space is huge (nearly uncomprehensable).

    Storm