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Five Billionth Device About To Plug Into Internet

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the how-many-fingers-is-that dept.

alphadogg writes "Sometime this month, the 5 billionth device will plug into the Internet. And in 10 years, that number will grow by more than a factor of four, according to IMS Research, which tracks the installed base of equipment that can access the Internet."

25 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. devices... by alphatel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If there was a race to plug in the most, what would be the cheapest method of getting several million "devices" online? Also, what would we win?

    --
    When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
    1. Re:devices... by jd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The cheapest method is to not have physical hardware. Get a single box, plug in the CLICK software routing element for the kernel and the routing element to pipe onto a network simulator like NS-2 or NS-3. Have your simulated network contain a million virtual nodes, all with their own IP address. You now have a million nodes on your network and there's nothing even a simple portscan could do to tell you that they were not physical devices.

      If you're really clever, have some of the terminal nodes on the virtual tree connect to a virtual machine running on the Linux box. For any one of those nodes, you can even demonstrate the existence of applications, login prompts, etc.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    2. Re:devices... by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Find your old PCs, install some dialup software (like NetZero)*, and give it away to anyone who does not have a computer. That's how I got my brother, then my niece, then a poor neighbor online. So +3 additional devices. If all the geeks did this with old PCs or laptops, we could add several million internet devices within a year.

      *
      *If they have DSL, use that instead.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    3. Re:devices... by bofkentucky · · Score: 3, Informative

      Theoretical, for a single piece of HW Solaris 10 on a Sun Sparc Enterprise T5440, 4 Processors 512GB Ram 256 LDOM's per server 8191 Zones per LDOM 1048448 Total machines in a 4RU enclosure the machines would be severely IO and disk space bound (Only 4x300GB disks in the box), but it could be done Anyone know the theoretical numbers for Linux on Z or a fully configured vmware cluster?

      --
      09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
    4. Re:devices... by Score+Whore · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...there's nothing even a simple portscan could do...

      You know, if you aim low you'll certainly succeed.

      (Generally if you are going to use the phrase "there's nothing even can do", then should be something powerful. Such as "my plan is coming to fruition and there is nothing Superman can do to stop me." Contrast that with "my plan is coming to fruition and there is nothing two week old infant can do to stop me.")

    5. Re:devices... by Score+Whore · · Score: 2, Informative

      Not even in your wildest dreams. Each zone requires it's own init, svc.startd, svc.configd, cron, etc. Just those four are going to 2.5 MB + 17 MB + 10 MB + 5 MB = 35 MB of memory just to even begin to boot. You 512 GB of RAM only provides 512 KB of memory per zone. Even if you used all of the disk space as swap, you're still way short.

  2. This is confusing.... by mark-t · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There's only 4 and some odd billion IP addresses, so this number would suggest that they are included NAT'ted devices... except how can they have a remotely accurate count of the number of NAT'ted devices?

    Or are they including places that have migrated to IPv6?

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:This is confusing.... by Kepesk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Notice that they're careful to say they're tracking "equipment that can access the Internet". I have 1 IP address, but I have 4 internet-capable devices using it, 5 if you count my phone. I would imagine that they have ways of estimating how many devices on average use the same IP based on surveys and studies and the like.

      --
      Help me fix my brother's injured butt!
  3. Owner of that device wins a big reward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The owner of the five billionth device will receive 5 billion Flooz.

    1. Re:Owner of that device wins a big reward by delinear · · Score: 4, Funny

      Cue lots of "Congratulations, you are the 5 billionth device to connect to the internet, click here [and submit your personal data] to win a prize!!" flash banners...

    2. Re:Owner of that device wins a big reward by AndrewNeo · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think you meant 'que?'

  4. Five billion? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    What's the maximum number of different MAC addresses again?

    "The original IEEE 802 MAC address comes from the original Xerox Ethernet addressing scheme.[1] This 48-bit address space contains potentially 248 or 281,474,976,710,656 possible MAC addresses."

    Oh okay, never mind then.

  5. Unique device identifiers by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    except how can they have a remotely accurate count of the number of NAT'ted devices?

    Plenty of Internet application protocols use unique device identifiers that remain unique even when used through network address translation. For example, HTTP or HTTPS clients behind a NAT have cookies that can be used to estimate how many devices are active.

  6. Sounds wrong to me by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sounds wrong to me. My IP address is only 127001 and I've not had this computer for very long.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:Sounds wrong to me by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 4, Funny

      How long have you had it? I mean I got mine not too long ago and I'm all the way up to 1921681100! Clearly its growing exponentially.

    2. Re:Sounds wrong to me by mutube · · Score: 4, Funny

      Haha I just logged into your IP address and found a load of donkey porn! Pervert!

      Wait? What?

      --
      Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
    3. Re:Sounds wrong to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I think it depends on which country you are in.

      Mine is fe8064bdcf91f17e. I am in Europe so this must be the metric system.

  7. Re:We'll know soon enough by DarkKnightRadick · · Score: 2, Interesting

    SkyNet is slated to go online later this month too. Coincidence? :p

    --
    "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
  8. Paging Dr. IPv6 by schmidt349 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    5 billion devices is, let's face it, outside the capacity of an addressing scheme (IPv4) that originally only anticipated a shade over 4 billion possible devices. Why are we not moving over to IPv6 faster? I don't know much about networking and related issues; what are the big challenges for IPv6 going forward?

    1. Re:Paging Dr. IPv6 by Ephemeriis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      5 billion devices is, let's face it, outside the capacity of an addressing scheme (IPv4) that originally only anticipated a shade over 4 billion possible devices. Why are we not moving over to IPv6 faster? I don't know much about networking and related issues; what are the big challenges for IPv6 going forward?

      First, you've got the whole chicken-and-egg thing going on. There isn't a compelling reason for businesses to roll out IPv6 because most of the world is still on IPv4. Nobody will be visiting you v6 website. There isn't a compelling reason for ISPs to roll out IPv6 because most of the businesses are still on v4. There are no v6 websites to visit. Nobody wants to go first.

      Then you've got some very real technical hurdles... New software and hardware requirements. Patches, upgrades. All that good stuff. And right now that looks like an awful lot of work for relatively little benefit. Legacy hardware that might not be upgrade-able.

      Plus, right now, NAT pretty much works. Yes, I know, it's an ugly hack... But it works. It's hard to tell somebody that you really need to spend tons of time/effort/money switching things over to IPv6 when they're currently able to do everything they need to.

      You've also got some weird psychological resistance to IPv6 addressing. Folks (even IT people) freak out when they see all those hex digits.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    2. Re:Paging Dr. IPv6 by Pentium100 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Incompatibility with v4.

      IPv4 devices will not be able to access IPv6 devices, which means that if you have devices with old OS in your network, you will have to use both v4 and v6.

      Also, there is that chicken-and-egg problem. There is only a small amount of servers that support v6 and even smaller number of them support only v6.

      1.There is no reason for a user to upgrade to IPv6 (they may need to change their router, the new IP address is almost impossible to remember etc) because little would be gained from it (very few servers support only IPv6). A IPv6-only connection wold be almost useless.
      2.There is no reason for a company to upgrade to IPv6 because all of their clients can use IPv4. Goto 1.

    3. Re:Paging Dr. IPv6 by Zocalo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Also, no one is really sure that there are not some gaping and fundamental flaws in the protocol that are just waiting to be found and exploited by some enterprising black hat. CIOs not wanting to have to deal with a serious network compromise because they were on the bleeding edge of adoption probably has a lot to do with things. It's been a long time since large organizations have had every device on their network on an Internet routable IP, and there's a nice sense of false security to be had in thinking NAT at gateway firewalls and routers provides you with some valuable additional protection.

      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    4. Re:Paging Dr. IPv6 by loufoque · · Score: 2, Interesting

      First, you've got the whole chicken-and-egg thing going on. There isn't a compelling reason for businesses to roll out IPv6 because most of the world is still on IPv4. Nobody will be visiting you v6 website. There isn't a compelling reason for ISPs to roll out IPv6 because most of the businesses are still on v4. There are no v6 websites to visit. Nobody wants to go first.

      As an employee working on upgrading some network products to support IPv6, let me add on that.
      There is simply no real demand whatsoever for IPv6 on the market. The only reason we're doing this is because this is necessary for sell our products to the US government, but even them do not use it.

      IPv6 is not implemented because no one asks for it, and those that do only do so for "political" reasons and don't even use it, so it doesn't matter if the support is any good or not.

    5. Re:Paging Dr. IPv6 by Chang · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're completely right about the psychological resistance. I don't know why but even hard core tech people take time to get over the addresses and I think this has been a major factor in the lack of widespread adoption.

      You're completely wrong about the number of IPv6 websites. There are thousands available and the growth has been noticeably accelerating since the 2008 Google IPv6 implementors conference. Every year around conference time more major sites announce availability. This year Facebook was the big one (but not the only one!) to announce a beta site.

      Also - try running a torrent on a dual stack connection and you'll clearly see that IPv6 is very popular among torrent users.

      There are a couple of major things coming up that are really going to impact this whole IPv6 discussion in the next couple of years.

      There has been ongoing work to make IPv6 -> IPv4 NAT work well. This will be needed for sites that can get an IPv6 block for free while an IPv4 block is expensive or unavailable. See here - http://ecdysis.viagenie.ca/

      This NAT64/DNS64 technique is available today and makes an IPv6 only connection 95% usable for IPv4 sites and 100% usable for IPv6 content. The IPv4 breakage is sites that hard code IPv4 addresses directly into HTML or XML, or whatnot which is easily fixable if there is incentive. Now for some incentive.

      T-Mobile has decided that NAT64 is the way to go so they intend to start rolling out IPv6 only phones using NAT64/DNS64 to get to IPv4 sites. This means that in the next couple of years there will be a couple million handsets that are IPv6 only accessing the IPv4 through a large scale NAT64. Verizon is joining the party using dual stack IPv4 NAT/IPv6 native phones. Think about the _global_ demand for cell phones and you can see what will be driving IPv6 adoption pretty clearly. It dwarfs the PC market so the old way of thinking about your aunt's Linksys don't really apply. Mobile web is rapidly increasing in importance and you won't have to do anything more than get a new phone in a couple of years to join the IPv6 party.

      Comcast, AT&T, and others have announced IPv6 trials in 2010 and 2011 respectively. These could be production systems a year or two down the road. When that happens, anybody who is running Mac OS X, Vista or Win7, or Linux is likely to automagically get a working native IPv6 connection very quickly after that when they or their ISP replaces their home router if it wasn't already v6 (Apple, Buffalo, or recent D-link). This is going to largely coincide with the IPv4 free pool exhausting itself which will give another kick in the pants to adoption.

      You don't have to spend a ton of money - all the pieces have been in place for some time in most networks.

      It's true that businesses would have to spend money if they wanted to completely eliminate IPv4 but there isn't actually a need to do that. At many companies - most or all of their web facing presence equipment has likely been IPv6 capable for a couple of years now. What's needed is to get a connection (tunneled at first and then native when the traffic demands it) and turn it on. You don't have to eliminate IPv4 internally and you don't have to switchover everything. It's a transition and we don't need to make a false choice when neither the situation nor the economics demands it.

      Sorry - got off on a rant there.... :-)

  9. Re:5 billion seems low by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    but you'd think just in the consumer market most people have at least 2 or 3 internet connected devices (laptops, phones, pda's, ebook readers, video games consoles, etc.)

    A large segment of the world's population doesn't have lunch.