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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."

17 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.")

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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
  5. 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 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!
  6. 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!
  7. 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...

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

    I think you meant 'que?'

  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.