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Black Market May Develop For IPv4 Addresses
GMGruman writes "Everyone knows that we're running out of traditional IPv4 Internet addresses and that switching to IPv6 is the answer — yet foot-dragging by IT departments and vendors means the problem is still on the back burner. IPv4/IPv6 coexistence is now expected to last for 5 years. In this article, Mel Beckman explains how this is all leading to a black market in traditional IPv4 addresses that will catch many people off-guard, and boost Internet access prices sky-high."
You mean they will start NATing more often for residential customers. Long gone will be the default of having a dynamic Public IP address. Want one of those? That will cost extra.
Life is not for the lazy.
IPv4 is like oil. It'll never go away.
Luckily, IPv4 isn't a bad technology.
That shit was funny for a while but now it's just annoying. Give it up, dude.
This ain't rocket surgery.
So if I have IPs, and someone else needs IPs, I sell them some of my IPs... What's the problem here? For that matter, that is how it works for anyone who's not a big provider. When I wanted static IPs for my cable connection I asked my cable ISP. They said sure, $5/month/each.
I'm just not sure I see a problem. Goes double since higher IPv4 prices may encourage IPv6. Consider:
Say I'm an ISP, we have all old v4 hardware. To the extent our routers support v6, it is all in software meaning that any significant amount of IPv6 will overload them. They only have IPv4 ASICs. I don't wanna upgrade because it is expensive. So I keep getting more and more customers that want IPs. However, I run out, my allocation is gone. ARIN says "Sorry, all space is allocated." So I go looking around. Turns out I can buy a /24... But for 500x what I used to. Ouch. Well then, maybe time to get some IPv6 hardware.
Likewise it could encourage customers to want IPv6. A company buys a net connection and says "We need 32 IPs." ISP says "Well you can have 32 v4 IPs for $3200/month, or you can have as many IPv6 IPs as you want, and 1 IPv4 IP for 6-to-4." Company says "Oh ok, v6 may be more of a pain, but it is worth it to save the money."
What it comes down to is we need to migrate away from IPv4. That'll be a long process, but one thing that'll help it along is if there's economic incentive to move to IPv6. Right now, the situation is generally that there is an economic DISincentive to move to v6. You need new hardware, sometimes new software, etc. It costs money and IPv4 works fine. However, if v4 starts costing more, that makes v6 more attractive.
So I don't see this as a "black market" nor do I see it as a big problem.
They've been talking about this since maybe 2005 or earlier, and yet I didn't see this happen...
Could an organization with a /8 resell a block of their IP addresses? I can't imagine how someone like MIT or US Postal Service, could use 16million IP addresses, or HP use 32million (they have their own plus Compaq/DECs).
Slightly used internet address.
Act now and 127.0.0.0 could be yours today!
Only $5.00!
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
I know a guy who can get you a slash 29, but it'll cost you.
More of a technical issue ... how are the people in this "black market" going to handle the routing?
According to the article, that time was yesterday.
The authors of TFA estimate that in less than a year ARIN will have no more /8 blocks left to allocate.
How do you secretly buy something that only works, by definition, if the public routing table knows it belongs to you?
Can someone please explain what any of this means to me, as an end user? I have a router (Time Capsule) seems to support IPv6, and my computer does too.
i guess.. in the same way the universe will eventually run out of energy.
"It was like a million high school physics teachers crying out in unison, then suddenly silenced."
1) Connect to my dynamic IP address ISP
2) Post ad on eBay for the IP
3) Sell it
4) Disconnect
5) Repeat from 1 to 5
6) Profit!
--- Illogical Spock
According to the article, that time was yesterday.
The authors of TFA estimate that in less than a year ARIN will have no more /8 blocks left to allocate.
Which has nothing to do with how many are sitting unused by ISPs and large companies sitting on big IP blocks.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
The article also estimates that the RAR allocations will deplete with at most a 6 month lag behind ARIN. So, the /8 depletion rate is a good indicator as to the rate that IPv4 addresses are being exhausted.
Also, according to the article, it's not so easy for the average organisation to hoard addresses:
Such a move could mean price increases as depletion nears. Under today's rules, a small organization would pay a minimum of $1,250 annually for a /24 assignment, which represents 256 addresses, the smallest block that can be portably routed on the Internet. Smaller allocations than this must be obtained from an ISP, at the cost of a few dollars per month per IP address. Larger organizations could pay between $4,500 and $18,000 per year, but in all cases address holders must provide justification to their registry to continue using IPv4 allocations.
And the percentage of addresses that are held by the 'old guard' are far too few, or too entrenched to do any more than stay the crunch for a few extra months.
If IPv4 addresses become very expensive, people will just ... switch to IPv6.
Yeah. That's how free markets solve problems, be they black, or any other color.
But usually when a chart contains a combination of past data and future predictions, it is customary to color the two sections differently or otherwise make a clear distinction between the two. I read that plot and thought (for a second) "Holy shit there are only 2 /8s left!" before realizing that it wasn't December 2010.
Here is a good example: http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2009/03/21/GR2009032100104.gif
Also, according to the article, it's not so easy for the average organisation to hoard addresses:
Sure... as long as they use them. Like the 200+ Microsoft bots that hit my forums at the same time indexing the same content? I guess Microsoft is using those IPs... for what I dont know. Does each of their search servers need to do it's own index of my forums? Why will 15 or 20 be in the same thread at the same time?
I know... it doesnt matter...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Sorry, I'm just kinda cranky because even after adding a robots.txt entry to slow them down, they still send a bunch to the same pages and way more bots than needed - just was noting the ton of their IPs on the server at the same time I was responding.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Stream_Protocol
Except where the corporations can buy whatever regulated market they wish to, and individuals have no choice in the matter. I agree with you, but the last decade, at least, has shown that government regulation in this country is for sale to the highest bidder. Brac Apartments
The current use of IPv4 addresses is far from optimally efficient, but I don't think it's as sparse as many people seem to imply.
For example, those search bots might be on non-co-located machines. Yeah, companies could start making greater use of NAT gateways and better CIDR suballocations, but that isn't going to be easy or convenient. For many of those companies, changing the infrastructure to do that is close to the effort required of just going straight for the better solution of dual stack IPv4/IPv6.
ARIN had a booth at Interop last week. I asked them why they don't confiscate the /8 that's assigned to Haliburton, which is mostly wasted. They said they don't want to get shot.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
Seems more likely that what will happen is that all "normal users" get RFC1918 IPv4 addresses.
/8 public IPv4 range can then serve 16 to 32 billion users.
So you could have say 1000 to 2000 ISP users behind one ISP public IPv4 address, which will be shared to access the Internet. One
Stuff like WoW, google, facebook, gmail, IM will still work.
But running a public server, Bittorrent and other P2P stuff will be difficult. If you are lucky the ISP might allow you to serve to peers within each RFC1918 "district".
The Media Companies and Powers-That-Be might consider this a feature and not a problem. Since this means locking in to a world of few talkers and many listeners.
Pretty sure he means that entropy is increasing, which in some sense is the loss of energy; at least, useful energy. On the other hand, we're probably just going to be sucked into black holes.
Great Intellect...
To really do blackmarket on IP addresses you cannot be anyone. ... that article sounds a little bit non sense.
You need to be an ISP, with at least a LIR to route those IPs almost everywhere or a hosting company so you don't move the IP but host the applications
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
I'd be using IPv6 if only my ISP supported it. I think all ISPs should get on with getting it out there, and then give us one by default. Then no one would have to worry, except the ISPs. Because IPv4's going to run out so soon, I'd recommend a nice round date for the deadline for the Internet switchover - 1/1/2011.
Building an ISP with dark fiber is easy! Just set up millions of tiny apartments inside the Internet Exchange buildings, and get some cat5.
IPv4 addresses are globally unique too. That's why we're running out of them.
While it's technically possible to build a NAT gateway that allows IPv4-only clients to access IPv6 servers, it would be a rather messy blob of state tracking and fake IPs. You're better off deploying IPv4 NAT alongside native IPv6. If a customer doesn't have IPv6-capable equipment, then they'll still be able to access most of the webby stuff for years to come, since anyone running a server of consequence will have IPv4.
IPv4 NAT will impede P2P networking, but if the customer really wants that, they can upgrade to some IPv6-compatible equipment.
I hope you are talking about an exchange for a static IP address, otherwise your post might be seen as offtopic
Great ping times, test it now!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Do something about it, you are a customer after all. (Assuming you have a choice about which ISP you give your business to, and aren't in some horrible monopoly situation)
i) Complain to your ISP, ask them why they don't support IPv6
ii) Threaten to switch to an ISP that does support IPv6
iii) Actually switch to an ISP that supports IPv6, and tell your old ISP why you are moving.
Companies will listen to their wallets, if nothing else.
and yes, my ISP supports IPv6 native & tunneled and has a 6to4 gateway if you don't want to dual-stack
I worked on contract in IT dept of an international bank based in the UK, actually somewhat in the north, more I dare not say. They used addresses from 10/8 like crazy, and when they ran out, started using 11/8
Some of the skeptics will think I'm making it up. Battle-hardened IT pros will probably facepalm and know it has the ring of truth and that no-one would possibly come up with such a stupid plan and therefore it must be true!
I have a shell company I'll glad sell, which comes with a grandfathered, 15 year old /21 :)
Thank you subject #415780. Your cooperation has been noted. We will take immediate action to discipline the member of staff of ARIN you talked to, so that in future his replacement will say the correct thing.
Your commanding master, Haliburton.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
the coast of , in a sunken ship. Get your gold IP for just 10 payments of 29.95!!!1!!!!!one!!!!111
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
you just gave gthe economic argument for IPv6.
Nobody gives a shit (about anything) till it starts costing them money. When IPv4 gets expensive, people will move to v6 and sell their v4 addresses.
Don't worry about it.
Deleted
> IPv4/IPv6 coexistence is now expected to last for 5 years.
I'm pretty sure that's a lowball estimate. I do not see IPv6 overtaking IPv4 as the primary protocol of the internet for several times that long at the very least, and quite frankly my money is on never. I see IPv6 being the next MicroChannel Architecture or Itanium: how's it going to ever get businesses (other than the core IT shops who are already behind it) on board, given that it's not even slightly backward compatible? It's a classic prisoner's dilemma, with dozens of participants: if *everybody* does the "right thing", everybody's better off, but if even *one* of the major players doesn't bother, the whole thing is pointless and the practical thing to do is ignore it.
> this is all leading to a black market in traditional IPv4 addresses
I'm not sure I would call it a black market, since there is (to my knowledge) nothing illegal or unethical about reselling such resources. It's not the way things have traditionally been done, but it will be. But yeah, IPv4 addresses are going to be resold (as in, ISPs will probably buy back unused subnet blocks from their customers and then sell them to other customers). Duh.
> that will catch many people off-guard,
Everything that ever happens catches some people off guard, no matter how obvious it is ahead of time that it's going to happen.
> and boost Internet access prices sky-high."
Non sequitur. There are more than 2^31 total public IPv4 addresses, which is in practice (with NAT for systems that don't need to provide public services) more than enough to meet the actual need. Consequently, they don't need to be very expensive, and they won't be. Anybody who tries to charge completely outlandish prices will be underbid.
IPv4 addresses *will* have to cost money, though, going forward, because when they're basically free, as now, organizations snap up entire Class-A blocks, because they can, even if they're only planning three servers and a couple of NAT gateways for workstations. That's why we're running low: it's human nature to take more than you need as long as it's free or nearly free. So the price of IPv4 addresses will go up enough to convince some people to sell off some of the extra ones they're holding that they don't need. An equilibrium will be reached, and that will be that.
My guess is home users who want a public IPv4 address (e.g., so they can remote-desktop into their home PC from work or whatever) will end up paying an extra dollar or two a month for a public IPv4 address (either as a line-item on their bill, or by using a slightly more expensive ISP that bundles it). This is a very rough estimate, but I think the price point that's needed is somewhere around that level. Much more, and they'll be a glut on the market; much less, and nobody will be willing to give them up for sale.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I thought Nortel Networks, which is bankrupt and almost gone now, had a class A address range (47.x.x.x). Will that not be freed up?
T-Mobile USA uses 25.0.0.0/8 for their NAT endpoint addresses. This is not some IT department in a bank, this is a telecommunication company. They should know better.
eom
That would be more like "Wew, no more of those annoying bandwith hungry websites ; we can cancel upgrades to our network."
Roll out IPv6. Anybody that cares enough about having a large address should buck-up and run their own DNS. Problem solved.
IPv6 has some immature aspects to it. IPv4 has had decades of hardening in the practical space. As the only viable protocol, all the issues encountered had to be solved and people couldn't bail on IPv4 if it were not fixed. Much of the experience has been translated over, but owners of IPv6 have been keen to try to rethink every aspect of how things are done, frequently missing corner cases or demanding a workflow change for net admins accustomed to IPv4. With no hard requirement driving these admins to adopt IPv6, rejected admins just report back to their organization that IPv6 is infeasible, and walk away from the table since IPv4 works today.
ISC's DHCP server still doesn't have full function in IPv6 compared to IPv4, and resorts to violating RFC 3315 to try to hack in a feature from IPv4.
There are also many standards that are still IPv6-incapable. Examples include IPMI (net configuration directives have 4 bytes for addresses and such) and PXE.
Of course, this is all part of the chicken and the egg, standards improving requires demand in the industry that lacks in an IPv4 dominated world, and IPv6 won't displace IPv4 so long as the standards aren't improved. There are enough people chipping away at it to make some progress, but the rate is significantly slower than it would be if people didn't just go back to IPv4 and take a wait and see position.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Can they take her sooner, or is there a waiting list?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
OK, you had me right up until the point where I noticed on the "shock and awe" graph in TFA that showed the "rapid decline, oh noes!!" of /8 netblocks.
Gee, go figure. We're running out of blocks of IPv4 address space that are 16 million addresses wide. Shocking, I know.
What happened to IPv5?? Did it go the way of the Oral A toothbrush?
How long would it actually take to switch over? All of the IPv4 addresses are already available as IPv6 addresses. If everyone just magically started using IPv6 tomorrow, the currently allocated addresses would all still work, as would the routing.
I see a few problems. First off, everyone who is currently familiar with how to configure and manage IPv4 would be expected to know how to do all of the same things with IPv6. While I'm certain the learning curve isn't TOO high, there are certainly many people who simply haven't bothered because they haven't had to yet.
Secondly, what legacy operating systems, hardware, and application software still exists that has no support for IPv6? This is no small problem, as I'm certain there's a large number of 20+ year old software still in service that may not be feasible to upgrade. It might have survived Y2K, but this one could finally kill it off. Of course, if this software need not connect to the internet at large, it could live on in an internal network forever.
Of course, no matter how much preparation you do, no matter how much you advertise the change. On D-Day, ISP's are going to have a busy day on the phones, convincing their customers that "no, in fact, the web ISN'T broken. No, we don't still support 16 bit netscape on windows 3.1."
Since, in theory anyway, IPv4 and IPv6 can co-exist right now, it does make sense to demand.. or at least strongly encourage all hardware and software developers to ensure full IPv6 capability along with IPv4 in all of their products from this point forward, assuming they haven't been doing so already, and also make the configuration seamless. If you configure IPv4, IPv6 is already configured using those addresses and works as-is, so on the day that IPv4 goes dead, the software still works without a hitch.
The biggest issue of all, of course, is who decides when to pull the plug on IPv4? While nobody will really just turn off IPv4, there WILL come a day when someone starts using IPv6 addresses that don't correspond to IPv4 addresses and from that point on, it will be necessary for the entire Internet to be in compliance. Who makes that call? And do we listen to them? This isn't the same scale of a problem as converting the broadcast TV to digital was. They couldn't even keep a schedule on that, and it was only one country. How do you ensure that the entire world, including countries we don't all entirely get along with, to agree to a mass-scale, instant upgrade on a specific date? This is likely to be more than just a mild inconvenience. The Internet is used for far more critical applications than twitter and porn distribution. At least, it'll be an interesting news day... assuming I can get online. :)
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
1 - More NAT for those that don't need public IP ( most consumer devices don't really *need* it . Most business don't need 1000's either )
2 - More people move to v6 and the problem goes away.
Tho i do wish i had bought a small block long ago, but i didn't NEED it so i was responsible and passed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Well, n00b at some things, not at others.
I pay my ISP a few extra bucks for some static IPs. I fool around with server builds. I build 'em, play with 'em, trash 'em. Wash, rinse, repeat. I never bother to register anything with anybody to associate my IPs with any names. I just expect that if I'm sitting anywhere in the world and I want to look at that page I put on my playtoy of a web server at home, I only need to type in http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx./ If I need to fetch the file that I left on that miserable excuse for an ftp server that I have at home, I expect to be able to plop down in any internet cafe in any place in the world, fire up their locked-down, browser-only interface, and type ftp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and grab said file with a couple of mouse clicks.
That's why I pay my ISP for static IPs.
Is there anything about all of this that will break that functionality?
I worked on contract in IT dept of an international bank based in the UK, actually somewhat in the north, more I dare not say. They used addresses from 10/8 like crazy, and when they ran out, started using 11/8
Some of the skeptics will think I'm making it up. Battle-hardened IT pros will probably facepalm and know it has the ring of truth and that no-one would possibly come up with such a stupid plan and therefore it must be true!
When I worked at SG Warburg (15+ years ago) I was shocked that they'd just gone ahead and used all kinds of class A networks ... not just the 10/8 reserved for private networks, but any ol' class A they pleased, whether or not it belonged to MIT, the DoD, or whoever. When I told them they would have to reengineer their entire network before they could hook up to the Internet, the lead network engineer replied breezily: "We won't be letting anyone on the 'net for at least another ten years, and by then we'll all be using IPv6 anyway." I replied that, knowing how long COBOL had (at that time) held on, I'd be surprised if we moved to IPv6 within 20 years, and if we did, it would be because the IPv4 address space was well and truly exhausted, and that, if SG Warburg was still not on the Internet in even half that time, it probably wouldn't exist as an investment bank (or any other entity, for that matter).
The company tanked about a year later (for reasons unrelated to my prediction, bad network practices, or indeed technology at all. It was an interesting lesson in what happens to an organisation rife with nepotisim and led by boarding school buddies when markets get a little tough, but I digress), was ultimately absorbed by Swissbank to become UBC, and as far as I know had their entire network infrastructure chucked in favour of something that was at least moderately compatible with public IP addressing. Not that connecting to the exchanges doesn't remain NATting hell, and probably will for at least another decade (they'll be dragged kicking and screaming into the ipv6 world long after the rest of us have moved, and I don't see too many organisations west of the Atlantic moving anytime soon).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
One thing he got exactly right is that "If people have legitimate rules that permit address transfers, they'll use them instead of a black market." There is now a formal ARIN transfer policy which will allow transfers of address space for payment. This is the critical bit that will probably prevent any significant black market from developing and, more importantly, having any real impact on the Internet at large.
The other thing that is absolutely right was his calling me an "pseudo economist". I am an engineer, not an economist, even if I do play one from time to time.
the one things I must say is that the IPv4 address space is near exhaustion and things will change. The adoption of IPv6, it undertaken soon and in a competent manner, looks to be far the most likely way to the future. Not the only way, but the only way I see to continue the growth of the Internet as we know it today. It does not mean that massive NAT implementation, which will eventually re-shape the Internet into a very different thing, won't be what happens.
Then again, I am only a "pseudo Economist" and even the real economists don't agree very often.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
nah companies will keep using them because their content suppliers will sue them into the ground if they don't. Their content suppliers will do this because the next level up of content suppliers would sue them into the ground if they didn't.
Broadcasters are generally limited to a particular geographical region and want to be able to advertise an exclusive in that region so content owners sell them an exclusive license for that region.
As long as internet broadcasters are taking reasonable steps to perform geographic restriction they will probablly be ok just as some spill over boarders is tolerated for traditional radio based transmissions.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Because I suggested that this wasn't a black market? It's not, regardless of what you think about regulation on any level. A black market is, by definition, selling illegal goods. Selling IP space wouldn't be a black market at all it would be, well, just a normal market.
Or am I an ideologue because I dared suggest that it might help solve a problem? Here's news for you: Free markets can solve problems. Not all problems, but then nothing solves all problems (if you think heavy regulation solves everything the former USSR would like a word with you). However there are certain problems they are well equipped to solve. One is dealing with demand for a scarce resource, as IPv4 IPs now are.
I'm not saying that "The free market will fix everything," I'm just saying that a rising cost in IPv4 space may help lead to an economic incentive to go to IPv6. If you've followed the current situation at all, you cannot argue that the current setup has done a good job promoting IPv6. The tech is there, the will to move isn't. Ok, well make IPv4 more expensive and perhaps that'll change. If the situation is as it was, a couple million (or more) to upgrade to IPv6 equipment or a couple thousand (or less) to get more IPv4 addresses, well it is easy to see why people choose more IPv4. However if the cost of the IPv4 addresses shoots up, maybe then it becomes worth changing.
Also there have been continual calls for companies with /8s to give some back. However, for now, there's no reason. Renumbering your IP space is a bitch and takes a lot of time and thus money. However if those IPs are now worth something, then maybe they'll take the time to do so to be able to sell some.
So sorry, but I don't see the "ideologue" thing here. I'm not saying this is a a sure fire solution, I'm saying maybe it'll help break the status quo we have now. If you can't see that, perhaps you are an anti-free market ideologue who simply refuses to acknowledge that a free or semi-free market can ever accomplish anything.
If the universe is expanding, but energy is conserved, then the energy density of the universe is approaching zero and there will be no perceivable energy! But that theory is as full of holes as yours is.
So you're saying they're going to build a nationwide network with dark fiber and solve the homeless problem? Gotta hand it to Google, they're pretty smart!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?