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Asia Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses
ZerXes writes "It seems that APNIC has just released the last block of IPv4 addresses and are now completely out, a lot faster then expected. Even though APNIC received 3 /8 blocks in February the high growth of mobile devices made the addresses run out even before the summer. 'From this day onwards, IPv6 is mandatory for building new Internet networks and services,' says APNIC Director General Paul Wilson."
Yeah, giving mobile phones IPv6 addresses makes a lot of sense. A 'no brainer', maybe. All new 'embedded' type consumer devices should be IPv6 only, IMO. It completely avoids most of the problems associated with IPv6 on so-called legacy IPv4 networks:
* there are no legacy applications
* the likelihood of connecting, directly, with anything on IPv4 that does not support IPv6 is drastically lowered
* there is little to no legacy hardware to support.
Of course, this would require the handsets and other 'embedded' devices to actually support IPv6. I don't know if that's the case, yet.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
APNIC is NOT out of IPv4 addresses. They are down to their last /8 - the one they got as one of the final five /8s being allocated to each of the RIRs. This puts them in the third and final stage of their IPv4 exhaustion plan, whereby they will only allocate a maximum of a single /22 to each network operator which is supposed to be used primarily to enable a transistion to IPv6 by supporting IPv4 to IPv6 gateways and hosts that just have to be on a native IPv4 address.
More information directly from APNIC here.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
GRAMMAR NAZI ALERT!
"a lot faster then expected"
Do people know the difference between then and than anymore?
Inappropriate use of your/you're there/their/they're then/than drives me nuts.
ZerXes, go back to digg.
Whoops, kid, it looks like you're growing up! You're getting too big for your clothes. Don't worry, though, it's nothing a little surgery can't fix.
A /22 is pretty much nothing, so what you're saying is that an ISP looking for addresses can get pretty much nothing from APNIC. Thus, they're basically out.
"""Network Address Translation [wikipedia.org] could provide some relief I think...no?"""
No.
BACKGROUND:
NAT, in the way which can be used by ISPs to reduce the need for IP addresses, works by mapping multiple internal IP addresses to a external one (or groups of external ones). So say you have a one thousand computers you need to keep online and you have only 100 addresses. NAT will allow you to logically map those 100 addresses to the one thousand computers.
NAT is able to do this by connection tracking. The router keeps in memory what connections were created with what external IP address and then routes the data from the reply back to the original host. So say my browser opens up a socket on 192.168.1.129:59343 and connects to Google on "www.google.com:80". The NAT router opens up a connection on 208.32.20.1:78190, connects to 'www.google.com:80'. When the machine listening on 'www.google.com:80' sends information back to 208.32.20.1:78190. Any data received on 208.32.20.1:78190 then automatically gets forwarded to 192.168.1.129:59343, which then is received by my browser.
WHY NAT IS FULL OF FAIL:
The reason that NAT + IPv4 is not a substitute for IPv6 is because the number of sockets that a router can open and manage is less then 16bits. That is the socket numbering scheme is 16bit scheme, of which a substantial number of sockets are reserved for specific protocols. That is less then 60,000 possible connections can be made by a router with a single public IP address.
Each new connection made by a machine behind a new router requires a new socket established. Just by having 3 tabs on my browser right now I am using roughly 20 connections. Each connection is going to a ad provider, google, different slashdot.org servers, etc etc.
Say that a internet user is using about 50 active connections at any one time then that means that 1 public address can only support about 1200 concurrent users. But it will break down long before that. People using bittorrent may use 300 TCP connections, which means that you can only support a 100-200 users.
The other aspect of this is that there is not enough IPv4 addresses for internet routers. That is a new ISP will run out of IP addresses long before they are even finish building their infrastructure!!! There wouldn't be enough addresses to even setup NAT routers!
This is taken care of by 'Carrier Grade NAT'. Which is you use NAT firewalls for your NAT firewall.
So....
Internet ----> NAT firewall -----(TCP tunnelled over TCP) ----> NAT firewall ----> Your home NAT router ----> Your PC.
Ever wonder why your bittorrent connections turn to shit!?
For Asia users this is already not good enough. They have RUN OUT. They cannot use NAT to extend it any further... they are over and done with.
Why not just make sockets 32bit or 64bit? Because that's retarded when you have IPv6, that's why.
I am currently running a IPv6 /32 network for my PERSONAL HOME NETWORK. All these are real, public, IP addresses.
79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336 addresses and 4,294,967,296 sub networks.
A subnet for IPv6 is a /64 network. 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses in a /64 subnet.
When IPv6 rolls around most people will end up getting a /48 network address. This is _only_ 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 addresses and 65,536 networks.
There are 281,474,976,710,656 /48 network addresses in total to give away. We will now only have to worry about IP address exhaustion when the human race becomes interstellar.
So, yeah, IPv4 luddites with their NAT savior complexes can go screw themselves. I want a efficient, open, and secure internet. NAT precludes this.
NAT is a solution to address depletion in the same manner than increasing the debt cap is a solution to the US national deficit.
NAT, to a networking professional, is an abomination. It functions literally by breaking TCP/IP and lying to network neighbors. It functions by breaking the rules networks are designed and intended to play by, and overuse of NAT prevents any intelligence in routing and networking. Imagine if mailing addresses were limited in the same manner. Everything is a PO Box. Now imagine several layers of PO Boxes have to be traversed for anything to be delivered.
Moving to IPv6 is the right way to fix this. It's not easy, but it's the right way to do it.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.