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What Happens When IPv4 Address Space Is Gone
darthcamaro writes 'We all know that IPv4 address space is almost all gone — but how will we know when the exact date is? And what will happen that day? In a new report, ARIN's CIO explains exactly what will happen on that last day of IPv4 address availability: '"We will run out of IPv4 address space and the real difficult part is that there is no flag date. It's a real moving date based on demand and the amount of address space we can reclaim from organizations," Jimmerson told InternetNews.com. "If things continue they way they have, ARIN will for the very first time, sometime between the middle and end of next year, receive a request for IPv4 address space that is justified and meets the policy. However, ARIN won't have the address space. So we'll have to say no for the very first time."'
There are a few. See figure 5 of Geoff Huston's IPv4 Address Report.
Trying? I'm done.
They definitely say no. Not only that, if the utilization of your existing IP space drops below a certain threshold, ARIN will start taking it back. And they won't take back your emptier networks, they'll take back whatever they want (usually the largest ones, i.e. the ones you most want to keep). They also no longer issue anything bigger than... I think a /22? It might even be smaller.
Everybody except ARIN was always like this, of course. ARIN could afford to be more generous because the US has a disproportionately large number of IPs for its population (and even for its server count). But now they're in the same boat as APNIC and RIPE, so they've gotten much stricter than they used to be.
You seem to think that that company will be ok with an IPv6-only setup. This is not the case. An IPv6-only host can only be reached by other IPv6 hosts. So all those schmucks out there without IPv6 won't be able to reach the company. That's probably a dealbreaker.
Oh great, artificial scarcity caused by greedy bastards refusing to upgrade because they're either too cheap to upgrade or looking to make a buck selling unused addresses...
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
add some protocol translation to their network to deal with anything that can't handle IPv6
You do realize that you need IPv4 addresses to do that, don't you? IPv4 systems can't talk to you if you don't have IPv4 addresses. Let's say you want to host virtual private servers for 1000 customers and each server must be individually reachable from the IPv4-only internet. What do you do if you can't get 1000 IPv4 addresses? Nothing, you're fucked.
Funny. Despite the amount of posts you have created here, you still don't realize where the real problem is. For any IPv4 host to reach your IPv6 hosts through protocol translation, you still need to have an IPv4 address. And this is a problem if there are no more IPv4 addresses available.
Try a thought experiment, you are an IPv4 host on the "old" internet, and you are trying to ping an IPv6 host behind protocol translation. What will you write to the command line? I would be interested to see how you would manage to answer this without the IPv6 host having an IPv4 address assigned as well.
Of course you are correct about all the routers and operating systems being IPv6 ready. But that is not the problem, accessing the old internet is the problem.
There are currently two companies forcing the hand of the consumer ISPs to adopt IPv6.
Since February this year Youtube has put all the actual media reachable on IPv6 as default when you access the youtube website through their normal DNS name.
Apple's time capsule and airport extreme by default sets up IPv6 through tunnels.
This means that a lot of people with Apple computers browsing youtube movies are heavy users of IPv6.
As there are only a few tunnel brokers, the load on those will be quite high.
Actually, Windows 98 has IPv6 support. It is no longer compliant with the standard, but it is there. In XP it actually works well enough for most uses. About the only thing not ready is cheap networking gear. But managed switches will still work as unmanaged switches. Those old D-link routers, on the other hand...
GE - 3.nnn.nnn.nnn
IBM - 9.nnn.nnn.nnn
AT&T Bell Labs 12.nnn.nnn.nnn
Xerox 13.nnn.nnn.nnn
HP 15.nnn.nnn.nnn
DEC 16.nnn.nnn.nnn
Apple 17.nnn.nnn.nnn
MIT 18.nnn.nnn.nnn
Ford 19.nnn.nnn.nnn
CSC 20.nnn.nnn.nnn
Halliburton 34.nnn.nnn.nnn
Eli Lilly Co 40.nnn.nnn.nnn
Bell Northern Research 47.nnn.nnn.nnn
Prudential 48.nnn.nnn.nnn
UK Work and Pensions 51.nnn.nnn.nnn
Dupont 52.nnn.nnn.nnn
Cap Debis 53.nnn.nnn.nnn
Merck 54.nnn.nnn.nnn
USPS 56.nnn.nnn.nnn
Defense doesn't need 7 - count them - 7 all to itself!
That's 26 - more than 10% - that can be mostly harvested.
More like IPv4 is a 2" tube, and IPv6 is a 79228162514264337593543950336" tube. That's how many more addresses it contains.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.