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RIPE Region Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses
New submitter 8-Track writes "The RIPE NCC, the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, distributed the last blocks of IPv4 address space from the available pool. This means they are now distributing IPv4 address space to Local Internet Registries (LIRs) from the last /8. An ISP may receive one /22 allocation (1,024 IPv4 addresses), even if they can justify a larger allocation. This /22 allocation will only be made to LIRs if they have already received an IPv6 allocation from an upstream LIR or the RIPE NCC. Time to move to IPv6!"
Actually, that was IPv5... so you see, you're the guy who skipped windows xp, vista, and windows 7, jumping straight into the broken windows 8 era.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipv5
Like youtube, google, facebook and slashdot.
ok, all except slashdot.
Bullshit. I have followed IPv4 exhaustion in detail for the last 5 years. The prediction was always that IPv4 will run out at the global level between 2010 and 2013 (it happened in February 2011), and run out at the regional level in the years after that (it happened in April 2011 in Asia-Pacific and today in Europe-Middle East). So no surprises at all. If you are a European ISP, and you stuck to the rules of RIPE NCC, you now have IPv4 stocks that should satisfy your growth needs for the next three months. After that, you cannot grow your network anymore without resorting to the mess that CGN is.
Guess what, they did: ::FFFF:111.222.111.222 is IPv6 for 111.222.111.222. But you still need to "fool around" with equipment because there is no way that an IPv4-only device can address an IPv6 device.
> 1. Fuck IPv6. Let's keep the IP addresses a rare and highly desired commodity;
/256 blocks and run out again?
/24 just because they can, can get as many addresses as they actually need for their servers plus one NAT gateway to service all the desktops. (Business desktops *need* to be behind some kind of hardware firewall or gateway anyway, for security reasons. There's no reason it can't do NAT as well -- the extra 0.002% of CPU cycles will put the electric bill up by, what, three cents a month?) Large international megacorporations, similarly, instead of nabbing a /8 for each major national subdivision of their company just because it costs almost nothing to do so, can scale down their allocation request to something more in keeping with what they might potentially actually need.
> 2. Charge an exorbitant fee every time a DHCP request is serviced;
> 3. Profit!
The problem with this is, IPv4 addresses are not rare. They're not anything like rare. There are approximately ten thousand times as many of them as are actually needed.
We only ran out because they were systematically over-allocated, handed out like free candy, based purely on requests, with no regard for actual need or common sense. My employer, for example, currently has more _unused_ global IPv4 address than we have employees. Our upstream provider did not even inquire how many addresses we needed or even wanted; they just handed us a block of the things. Something like 80% of the allocated global IPv4 addresses are not currently being used on the public internet.
More to the point, in excess of 99.9% of the public IPv4 addresses that *are* actually being used on the public internet, in the sense of packets actually traversing public networks to or from systems assigned those addresses, aren't *needed*, because they're being used strictly for the client side of client/server networking (mostly in the form of DNS, HTTP, and HTTPS) and would if anything be better off behind NAT (because it would reduce the risk of worms, and there's no downside for systems that are not servers and do not actually need peer-to-peer, i.e., most home systems and virtually all business desktops).
IPv6 is not a solution to this problem. If we allocate IPv6 addresses the way we have allocated IPv4 addresses, we'll run out of them in just a few more years. Then what? IPv8, with 1024-bit addresses, so we can start allocating entire
The correct solution is to stop allocating public IP addresses that aren't needed. This can easily be done by charging a *small* amount (per month or per annum) for each address. Honestly, as many addresses as there are available, a dollar a month retail, marked up from less than half that in bulk, would be more than enough to charge. That way people can go ahead and get addresses they *might* actually need and not feel too bad about the expense, but it's enough to keep most people from grabbing ridiculously more addresses than they could ever possibly find a use for, as has been the case so far.
When people sign up for the internet at home, the ISP can ask, "For an extra dollar a month, do you want a public IPv4 address for peer-to-peer networking or to access your computer remotely from another location?" Most people will say no and can go behind NAT. Small businesses, instead of getting a
I believe this will naturally happen over the next few years (assuming IPv6 adoption goes about as far as I think it will). Nothing particular needs to be done (other than perhaps the usual anti-trust stuff in areas where competition between ISPs is artificially restricted e.g. by only one local phone company being allowed to maintain lines). The situation will sort itself out. ISPs that try to charge completely unreasonable fees for public IP addresses will go out of business, because people will just go find another ISP (assuming there's another ISP to go find -- see previous note about anti-trust issues). ISPs that charge too little (which I think would just about have to be nothing at all) will run out of addresses to allocate. Sorted.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The problem with this is, IPv4 addresses are not rare. They're not anything like rare. There are approximately ten thousand times as many of them as are actually needed.
Well, with only 32 bits of address space, that's only 4,294,967,296 possible addresses, and there are already more people on the planet. We do need more.
Here is a list of what works and does not work with CGN:
What NAT444 Breaks
We are left with a number of applications (and application types) that currently break when Large Scale NAT is introduced. To avoid the doom and gloom feeling that is sure to follow a list of just the broken stuff, let’s start with a list of what isn’t broken by NAT444/LSN:
Web browsing
Email
FTP download
Small files
BitTorrent and Limewire
Leeching (download)
Skype video and voice calls
Instant messaging
Facebook and Twitter chat
Not too shabby really, all things considered. That is quite a bit of functionality for being behind a fairly large kludge. If that were the end of the story I wouldn’t have written this article though. So, without further adieu, here is the list you’ve been waiting for; what NAT444 breaks:
FTP download
Large files
BitTorrent and Limewire
Seeding (upload)
On-line gaming
Xbox
PlayStation
Etc.
Video streaming
Hulu
Netflix
Slingcatcher
Etc.
Webcam
Remote viewing
Tunneling
6to4
Teredo
Etc.
VPN & Encryption
IPSec
SSL
VoIP
Limited ALG/SIP support
All custom applications with the IP embedded
Lack of ALGs
Wow, is it just me or is that list a bit longer? There’s that doom and gloom feeling creeping up.
http://chrisgrundemann.com/index.php/2011/nat444-cgn-lsn-breaks/
New things are always on the horizon
NAT
Stopped reading right there. NATs break the internet at a fundamental level and make any peer-to-peer technologies unworkable without retardedly complicated security holes. No, no, no, this is a terrible idea and you should feel terrible for having it.
IPv6 is not a solution to this problem. If we allocate IPv6 addresses the way we have allocated IPv4 addresses, we'll run out of them in just a few more years.
You make some good points, but this one is just silly. I think 10^38 IP addresses will last more than a few years, even if given out excessively. That's about 2 IP addresses for each cell in the human body for the entire world population. It's a big number.