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IPv4 Free Pool Drops Below 10%, 1.0.0.0/8 Allocated

Posted by kdawson on from the pure-water dept.

mysidia writes "A total of 16,777,216 IP address numbers were just allocated to the Asian Pacific Network Information Centre IP address registry for assignment to users. Some venerable IP addresses such as 1.1.1.1 and 1.2.3.4 have been officially assigned to the registry itself temporarily, for testing as part of the DEBOGON project. The major address blocks 1.0.0.0/8 and 27.0.0.0/8, are chosen accordance with a decision by ICANN to assign the least-desirable remaining IP address ranges to the largest regional registries first, reserving most more desirable blocks of addresses for the African and Latin American internet users, instead of North America, Europe, or Asia. In other words: of the 256 major networks in IPv4, only 24 network blocks remain unallocated in the global free pool, and many of the remaining networks have been tainted or made less desirable by unofficial users who attempted an end-run around the registration process, and treated 'RESERVED' IP addresses as 'freely available' for their own internal use. This allocation is right on target with projected IPv4 consumption and was predicted by the IPv4 report, which has continuously and reliably estimated global pool IP address exhaustion for late 2011 and regional registry exhaustion by late 2012. So, does your enterprise intranet use any unofficial address ranges for private networks?" Reader dude_nl sends in a summary of the issues with allocating from 1.0.0.0/8 from the BGPmon.net blog. "As Alain Durand mentioned on Nanog: 'Who said the water at the bottom of the barrel of IPv4 addresses will be very pure? We ARE running out and the global pain is increasing.'"

12 of 467 comments (clear)

  1. Ill bet this will happen by jhoegl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What will happen will be the standard that us humans have followed throughout the ages.

    We will wait until the IPv4 addresses run out and then force businesses to start using IPv6 if they want to get on the internet.
    There will be a temporary boon for networking manufacturers as companies will have to change their equipment
    As a side curiosity, I wonder how many public IPv4 IPs are actually in use.

    1. Re:Ill bet this will happen by causality · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What will happen will be the standard that us humans have followed throughout the ages. We will wait until the IPv4 addresses run out and then force businesses to start using IPv6 if they want to get on the internet. There will be a temporary boon for networking manufacturers as companies will have to change their equipment As a side curiosity, I wonder how many public IPv4 IPs are actually in use.

      Unfortunately I think you're right. We are a very reactive culture, generally. We don't seem to believe in using foresight to ease predictable and inevitable suffering of any kind. I suspect that's because there is a great deal of political power and quick money to be had in crises when people are desperate and afraid, but not so much in preparedness and prevention.

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    2. Re:Ill bet this will happen by lennier · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "every large and difficult-to-solve problem was once a small problem that could have been easily solved."

      Or alternatively, it was a small problem that could not be easily solved, because all attempted solutions caused other problems.

      Just because a problem exists doesn't mean a solution does.

      --
      You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
    3. Re:Ill bet this will happen by toddestan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well, you can put a little asterisk next to Windows as XP cannot do DNS lookups over IPv6, which is kind of a big problem if you want to browse the internet using just IPv6 in XP. I kind of doubt Microsoft is ever going to fix this, as this will end up forcing a bunch of people off of XP if the switch ever happens.

  2. 1.2.3.4! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Thats the IP address of my luggage.

  3. Install your own 6to4 tunnel today by bbn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Run this script to get your own IPv6 address today:


    CUR_IP=(`ip -4 addr show ${CUR_DV} | awk '/inet / { print $2 }' | sed -e 's/^\(\([0-9]\{1,3\}\.\)\{3\}[0-9]\{1,3\}\).*$/\1/'`)
    IPV6_ADDR=$(printf "2002:%02x%02x:%02x%02x:%04x::%04x" $(echo "${CUR_IP} ${SLA_INTF} ${INTF_ID}" | tr '.' ' '))

    ip tunnel add tun6to4 mode sit remote any local ${CUR_IP}
    ip link set dev tun6to4 up
    ip -6 addr add ${IPV6_ADDR}/64 dev tun6to4
    ip -6 route add 2002::/16 dev tun6to4
    ip -6 route add ::/0 via ::192.88.99.1 dev tun6to4 metric 1

    Install radvd if you want to share your new IPv6 subnet with other people on your local network.

    This is all it takes. You do not need to wait for your ISP to get a clue.

    Only problem is this does not work with NAT.

    1. Re:Install your own 6to4 tunnel today by AlexWillisson · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I use SIXXS, it's been working great.

      http://www.sixxs.net/main/ (www is required, the site isn't perfect but it works)

      I currently have two tunnels (one to an out of house server & one to my house), a subnet for my house (I've tested it, I can ssh from an external server directly to my in-house computers without any port forwarding). It adds a little latency (since you have to go through some other router before reaching the ipv6 part of the internet), but not too bad.

    2. Re:Install your own 6to4 tunnel today by pongo000 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Or do a Google search for "jeroen sixxs". You'll hit the motherlode, including these gems (among many):

      http://en.linuxreviews.org/SixXS
      http://www.koopman.me/2008/04/stay-away-from-sixxs-run-by-a-couple-kids/
      https://rejo.zenger.nl/misc/1221048210.php

  4. Re:What about getting back some... by Trolan · · Score: 5, Informative

    And for each of those /8s, you buy maybe 1.5-2 months more time until v4 exhaustion. Most of those /8s were also allocated prior to any policies permitting reclamation. Any recovery of them would involve legal wrangling, which would be expensive and time consuming. Prolonging the end result isn't a viable solution to the problem, when the solution is available now.

  5. How's NAT64 coming along? by Nicolas+MONNET · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the beginning of IPv6, something was missing: the possibility for IPv4 only hosts to reach IPv6 only hosts. The solution is a form of nat, called NAT64, but a few months ago it was just a vague proposal AFAIK. As long as this is not solved, the transition to IPv6 *cannot* work. There is a simple reason: the planned transition involves ALL hosts talking both IPv4 and IPv6. When you speak both, inevitably the least used IPv6 is not supported well, and people end up using only IPv4.

    It's so obvious, I find it shocking it's not taken into account more seriously.

  6. Re:Desirable? by mysidia · · Score: 5, Informative

    A good example of an undesirable IP address is one that's on a bunch of spam blacklists.

    Some IP addresses are more likely to have connectivity issues than others.

    One major issue improper or poorly maintained filters, that effects most address blocks that were previously not being assigned from equally, hence the DEBOGON projects and testing.

    There are more insidious issues that only effect some blocks, however.

    For example the guerilla usage of "1.0.0.0/8" by AnoNet, and "5.0.0.0/8" by Hamachi, plus private use of those, and other ranges instead of proper RFC1918 addresses by some enterprises.

    Makes hosts that use those IP addresses more likely to have communication problems with other hosts on the internet, just because their IP address is in that block.

  7. Re:they should start selling IPadresses like phone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    or 29.09.19.69 (my bday)

    So if you had your Social Security number as an IP address, what would it be?