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Interop Returns 16 Million IPv4 Addresses
klapaucjusz writes "Every discussion about IPv4 address exhaustion prompts comments about whether Apple (or MIT, or UCB, or whoever) needs all of those addresses. Interop has set the example by returning 16 million IPv4 addresses to the ARIN pool, extending the IPv4 address exhaustion deadline by a whole month."
Problem solved!
IP ADDRESS MONSTER HUNGRY!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
How long are they going to keep this up for? Jeez.
Yes, but this at least gives people an extra month to make sure everything is ready to go.
It's actually refreshingly nice to see that for once, a company has turned around and said: "I know this is ours, but we aren't using it. Someone else might need it more. Here you go chaps!".
Have you heard of Altruism?
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I'm guessing the best place to free up IP4 blocks is with the cell phone industry. They could roll out IP6 and eventually drop IP4 depending on the model of your cell phone (dual IP schemes in place for the transition). That industry changes so rapidly anyways and has the largest consumer share over the personal computer. Plus, cell phone devices centrally managed for the most part anyways. Shouldn't be too difficult of a task. At least, not nearly as difficult as flipping home users and SMBs over to IP6 in the same amount of time.
Life is not for the lazy.
Internet addresses are more leased than sold. The agencies in control let you use them, they don't give you a deed you get to keep forever. As a practical matter they belong to you because they don't want to cause trouble, but if push comes to shove, addresses can be taken back without compensation.
That may be part of the thought with this. Not only is it altruistic and makes you look good but they may be worried it becomes mandatory later. They worry maybe IANA says "Guess what? We are taking back that block, you've got 1 month to renumber," and it is a big hurry, rather than just doing it and then being in the clear.
If you don't understand the rather complex issues in converting everything over to IPv6, you might want to look in to it. On every level there are issues that have to be addressed. Some of them just cost money, some of them take work, etc.
So a simple example, but a big issue, is that of high end routers. They don't do routing in software, it isn't like they have a general purpose CPU that handles all the routing. They have one, but it is limited in power and is just for control. The routing itself is handled by ASICs. That is for speed reasons, only way to get data around that fast. Like all ASICs they do only what they were designed for. Ok well that means you have have a bigass router that can't handle IPv6. Sure technically you can upgrade the software and turn it on, but that hits the CPU. If anything more than a small amount of flows starts happening, the router crashes. You have to get a new router, that can do IPv6. Fine and well, but that costs a lot of money. These can be 7-8 figure devices. You don't just run out and buy all new ones all the time.
There are also software issues. Not everything handles IPv6 well. A major stalling point is Windows XP. It can have IPv6 added to it, but it doesn't support it by default. No problem on Vista and 7, but there's still a good amount of XP systems floating about. That'll change with time, but right now if ISPs just go IPv6 and fuck over their XP customers, well people get mad.
IPv6 is just going to be a gradual thing. Slowly more and more things will support it, it'll be enabled in more and more places. There isn't going to be a "We stop using IPv4 now and switch to IPv6 now," day, it'll just be a case that IPv6 will get rolled out everywhere. As that happens, you'll start to see IPV6 only services, or cheaper IPv6 services. Your ISP may offer you as many IPv6 addresses as you'd like to have for no cost, or IPv4 addresses at $10/month. Cheaper shared webhosts may do dedicated IPv6 addresses per site, but only one IPv4 address per server. As time goes on, people will probably stop bothering with the IPv4 stuff. New OSes may ship with it turned off by default, and eventually without it at all.
It will take time though. That is the only way it'll happen. Only in the fantasy world of geeks can it just be a switch that gets flipped tomorrow and everyone changes over.
Admittedly it was only a /24 (called a C-net by us geezers), but I had had it since about 1992. That was back in the days you could get a C-net for the asking, and a B-net (a /16 to you youngsters) could be had without too much whining.
I got a nice note back from ARIN saying:
As the popular quote says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. 199.201.131.0/24 has been returned to the pool of available addresses - thanks!
I have ONE static IP from Comcast Business. This is great; I don't really need more than one, right? Well the problem is they've given me a routed subnet. So for me to get my one IP, they also have to waste these additional IPs:
1. The IP on the WAN side of the router, provided to it by DHCP.
2. Internal network subnet address.
3. The router's internal network address.
4. Internal network broadcast address.
Yes, that means for my ONE static IP, Comcast is wasting four more. I can't help wondering why they built their network this way, rather than simply assigning me the WAN side IP and making sure it doesn't change. But hey, that's Comcast for you.
Who knows how many millions of IPs are wasted through inefficient allocation this way. If I have a block of six IPs it would make administrative sense to do it this way but for one? Come on. :)
So if you're a large business, what's the best way to make sure any two devices on your network can easily talk to each other if they need to? Keep in mind that companies like HP and IBM buy other companies on a very regular basis and there are constant collisions with private space when that happens. What's the solution?
The very best solution is to give all the machines unique public IPs that are routable and do your own routing inside your network. A lot more companies than those use that practice.
IPv4 and IPv6 can peacefully coexist. They already do on many networks and you don't know it. As I noted in another post, in domains this already happens. If you have Windows Server 2008 or R2 and Vista or 7 they'll just start doing IPv6 by themselves. When I look at the DNS for our AD a lot of hosts have A and AAAA records. You don't even know which IP you are using when you key in their name to ask for them. We didn't set any of this up, the OSes just have IPv6 stacks on them enabled and it all happens.
Now not everything is nearly that simple, of course, but it demonstrates how easily they can coexist. So what is more likely to happen is that as IPv4 runs out and places hit in to limits, IPv6 will be used for new stuff. Maybe all new desktops are IPv6 only. Old equipment will keep operating on IPv4 and servers, that have both 4 and 6 can talk to both. As time goes on the IPv4 will become less and less important. Equipment will get replaced and eventually it'll be all IPv6, save for a smattering of legacy systems here and there.
It is not a situation where you have to switch from 4 to 6. You can do both at the same time, no problem.
Once the IPv4 space runs out, it is likely that there will be a secondary market for /24's. That /8 could make quite a bit of money if carved into /24's. It would also be another 65k routes for the global routing table, which would be no fun at all.
We should appreciate their gesture; they did lose something and we are all slightly richer because of what they did.
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