No IPv6 Doomsday In 2012

itwbennett writes "Yes, IPv4 addresses are running out, but a Y2K-style disaster/frenzy won't be coming in 2012. Instead, businesses are likely to spend the coming year preparing to upgrade to IPv6, experts say. Of course there's a chance that panic will ensue when Europe's RIPE hands out its last IPv4 addresses this summer, but 'most [businesses] understand that they can live without having to make any major investments immediately,' said IDC analyst Nav Chander. Plus, it won't be until 2013 that North America will run out of IPv4 addresses and there's no sense getting worked up before then."

Comments

Business as usual

[InterestingFella]

ISP's and hosting companies will not run out of IPs. This only means that the price per IP will start to slowly grow. Hell, every time I order server the companies still happily hand me over 5 IPs without me even asking for them. With a simple request I can also buy 256 ips for the price of $300 a year.

Re:Business as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

a Y2K-style disaster/frenzy won't be coming in 2012. Instead, businesses are likely to spend the coming year preparing to upgrade to IPv6

Sounds just like a Y2K-style disaster/frenzy.

Re:Business as usual

[Columcille]

And the good news about this is "normal people" don't have a clue what you're talking about when mentioning ipv4 or ipv6. Tell them, "We're about to run out of IP addresses!" and they'll blink at you. Tell them, "No! PANIC! IPV4 IS ALL FILLT UP!" and they will call for some friendly people to take you to a padded room. Tell them, "Oh, and we have a problem with programs that use a two digit year instead of a four digit year" and they will build disaster shelters.

Re:Business as usual

[hairyfeet]

The problem is it WILL be a disaster but not for the reasons people think of, it'll be the flyover states that cause the disaster. Frankly the pay for IT in right to work states is so damned bad nobody bothers learning more than the bare minimum and the corps sure as fuck aren't gonna pay for courses on their dime, so you have poorly trained worker with zero incentive to learn this new tech. Add to this the shitty pay and even shittier hours have caused most of the older guys like myself to run to the hills and get away from the bullshit equals a perfect storm where the old guys that could have picked it up easily are gone and the new guys hate their jobs and are doing the bare minimum until they can find another line of work.

So my prediction is while the coasts will work everything in between will rapidly fall apart. problems that would have taken an hour or two under IPV4 and which will take the same time under IPV6 on the coasts will take days or weeks simply because the skilled manpower isn't there and frankly won't be forthcoming because corps have screwed IT so badly here nobody is taking the courses anymore. My local college is thinking about dropping the IT related courses simply because everyone is in medical or law, nobody is bothering with IT as its seen as a dead end. Basically the corps made the bed but we're all gonna get to lie in it when everything that has to cross the flyover states goes to shit. Hell I called my local ISPs the other day and even their tech guys didn't know jack shit about IPV6 nor could they give me a timetable, NOT a good sign folks and talking to friends in neighboring states they are hearing the same thing.

Business opportunity

[ccguy]

Well, anyone looking to make some big bucks in the next 1-3 year should start learning IPv6. Nothing major needed, just setup a IPv6 network at home, if you can rent an external server with IPv6 in any of the many data centers that already offer it, and play with it.

It's not a lot of effort and there will be many highly paid job offers soon.

Re:Business opportunity

[rubycodez]

I doubt much "highly paid jobs", it'll just get thrown onto the backs of IT droids with the rest of the crap they have to do (speaking as one myself)

Re:Business opportunity

[SJHillman]

I think he means you can hire yourself out as an "IPv6 Changeover Consultant", spend ten minutes coming up with an IPv6 addressing scheme and then passing it on the the IT droids while taking the credit and the money.

Silly

[HBI]

Only the regional NICs have run out of blocks to distribute. No one has actually run out of IPv4 addresses. Moreover, there is a lot that still can be done to reclaim addresses. Lastly, the huge swathes of multicast and class E addresses haven't even been tapped.

This is just more attempts for the shill media to try to herd people into replacing their gear. It'll fail like the rest.

The USG was scheduled to go to IPv6 in 2006. It hasn't even begun yet.

Re:Arrogance.

[HBI]

Christ. Arrogant much? last time I looked the Internet existed beyond the terrorist state known as the USA.

Your hate proves the submitter's point. You hate because the US is a hegemon. What happens outside the hegemon state is fairly irrelevant to those within.

Keep hating, it'll shorten your lifespan to no point.

Re:Way harder than a firmware update.

[Anonymous Coward]

A PC will handle layer 2 bridging just fine /w 8 ports. There really isn't a whole lot of effort involved in shoving packets around like that. Did you base your statement on actual observation or did you pull it out of your ass?

Those desktop 5 and 8 port switches from Linksys or whatever have "switch on a chip" type IC's because they're cheap, not because they're wonderfully efficient (though obviously lower power and better latency than a PCI bus)

Obviously in a datacenter, you want a real switch.. They're more efficient, lower latency, easier to manage, and have a full array of enterprise management and configuration capabilities.

It's not YOUR addresses ...

[garry_g]

... what you don't seem to get is that the problem is not when ARIN runs out, but when your business partners get IPv6 addresses you can't reach because you didn't do your f@ckin' homework and upgrade to dual-stacked ... So go ahead, stick to IPv4, and once your boss comes in and asks why you can't exchange data with your possibly largest customer, tell him: "why would we want IPv4? Arin hasn't run out yet" ... good luck on finding a new job afterwards ...
And if you believe "Hey, no problem, it's just the Chinese and Japanese and Australians, who needs them" - think again, Europe's RIPE will run out of IPv4 addresses next ...

Re:Bologna

[evilviper]

All the articles I've read seem to come down to "it's more convenient" for applications not to have to deal with NAT... Of course it is also more convenient for people who mean to do you harm, too, since we're back to connections to outside resources coming from the machine's actual IP address, a public NATing of the private one.

NAT doesn't provide any security. Never has, never will. No, I'm not wrong. No, I'm still not wrong.

If you have a firewall between your private network and the public Internet, then you'll have all the security you want, whether using IPv4 or IPv6, with or without NAT. If you don't, then it's trivial for bad guys to reach services you don't want them to get to. If there's NAT in-between, it'll take a couple extra specially-crafted packets, but it's pretty trivial to get around.

IPv6 addresses with a firewall? Bad guys can know the IPv6 address of your valuable systems all they want, but if your firewall is blocking incoming connections by default, they can't get a single bit through to the destination.

I don't understand why people's brains turn to jello when talking about IPv6.