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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."'
Whatever. The world has had how long now to move to IPv6? If we had two additional years, we'd be talking about this two years from now instead of right now. I've been using it for nearly 10 years now. I just hope that this threat is finally becoming significant enough to get ISPs and other organizations moving faster in the right direction.
To be fair, we've had almost 10 years. Strike that, 12 years.
We've even had all OS and router support for 5 years.
Fact of the matter is, nobody's moving to IPv6 until they *have* to. We can cry doom and gloom all we want (we have been, after all), and nobody cares. When Comcast can't address new customers, they'll get off their ass.
Though that's a bit of a gamble. The right answer is moving to IPv6, the best answer is doing that in advance, but they'll definitely consider just NATting new customers. Hopefully they'll do things properly, but this is ISPs we're talking about.
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The Internet was designed so that any computer could connect to any other computer. This is evident in the design of things like FTP, etc.
Every phone, watch, fridge, TiVo, computer, and printer should have a public IP address. Imagine if you didn't need to port forward for Bittorrent, if Skype could connect right to your friend's computer, or you could print to your home printer by just entering its address. That's how the internet was/is supposed to work.
NAT breaks this. Behind a NAT box, nobody can address a specific computer - only the NAT itself. This happens to lend some security, but is essentially accidental. With IPv6, your home router will instead be a firewall. Each computer will be addressable, but will still need to pass through.
Plus, there's enough address to give each subscriber many thousand. And they don't need to change. No more charging for a static IP...
Also, routing is more efficient since it can be done properly by hierarchy.
So there's a bunch of reasons. Pick some.
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That's not necessary, IPv6 already has the IPv4 address space blocked off and reserved for IPv4 addresses, so all you need is protocol translation for the systems that can't understand IPv6. It's not a hard problem. Yeah it will cost a little money, but really it's a drop in the bucket compared to everything else a business needs to deal with.
You band-aid it until you can justify the necessary overhaul. Eventually everyone will be on IPv6.
In other words, the reason nobody is rushing to fix it is because it's not that big of a deal. The problem is small enough that you won't really need to worry about it until it actually comes up.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
However, ARIN won't have the address space. So we'll have to say no for the very first time.
Hmmm, maybe that's part of the problem? They never say no to anyone. Do all those companies really need all those IP blocks? Maybe if they had said "no" once in a while we'd have another year or so to work out how we'll get everyone over to IPv6.
Too late. Hindsight is 20/20, etc. Does MIT really need a /8? No. Does HP need two? No. But as with any scarce resource when no more IPv4 addresses are available they will rise in value and people will auction off their space. The price will have an upper bound at the cost of deploying IPv6. That'll buy us another few years. And then people will NAT even more. That'll buy us a few more. And by that time most people will be ready to move to v6. There really is no need to panic here. I'm not sure where all of the anxiety stems from. The people that understand the issue and care about it are aware of it and on top of it. I suspect an ulterior motive.
No, it's artificial scarcity because the demand only exceeds the supply because those who control the demand (e.g. ISPs) choose to limit the supply by not upgrading their networks to use IPv6.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Uhuh.
Let's pretend, just for the moment, that this idea isn't ridiculous (it'd be simpler to deploy v6 than to get all those operators to re-number their networks). The current projected timeline for the remaining 20 /8s to run out is September, 2011, which is 17 months away. You propose to return 26 /8s to the pool. So, assuming the rate remains constant (which it won't), that gives us, what, 24 more months? Maybe?
Wow, way to go big guy! Instead of 2011 for IANA exhaustion, it'll now be 2013! Problem solved.