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ARIN Is Down To the Last /8 of IPv4 Addresses
An anonymous reader writes "On 3 February 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) issued the remaining five /8 address blocks, each containing 16.7 million addresses, in the global free pool equally to the five RIRs, and as such ARIN is no longer able to receive additional IPv4 resources from the IANA. After yesterday's large allocation (104.64.0.0/10) to Akamai, the address pool remaining to be assigned by ARIN is now down to the last /8. This triggers stricter allocation rules and marks the end of general availability of new IPv4 addresses in North America. ARIN thus follows the RIRs of Asia, Europe and South America into the final phase of IPv4 depletion."
They've been talking about this day for what seems like an eternity... Finally, we can start complaining about something else!
Pretty outrageous that the whole of North America has to go on a diet earlier because Akamai somehow needs a whole fucking /10.
ARIN's behavior has made it clear: you can get all the IPs you want as long as you're a big guy paying big fees. But a small company asking for a /22? Go away, small businesses don't deserve to be able to do business.
There's no place like ::1
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Years back, my boss got a whole class C for a company with ~5 employees and network footprint nothing more than one website. Maybe they can get some of the corporations with class As to give some back? (yeah yeah I know)
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I've got a whole block of IPv6 addresses available, cheap... act now, before the rush!
The IPv4 address exhaustion is a useful case study in human behavior in response to resource exhaustion.
http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_transcript_english.html
Relevant quote: "Remember our conclusion from the cartoon of one person per square meter; we concluded that zero population growth is going to happen. Let’s state that conclusion in other terms and say it’s obvious nature is going to choose from the right hand list and we don't have to do anything—except be prepared to live with whatever nature chooses from that right hand list. Or we can exercise the one option that’s open to us, and that option is to choose first from the right hand list. We gotta find something here we can go out and campaign for. Anyone here for promoting disease? (audience laughter)"
In this case, fortunately, it's extremely unlikely that violence and death will occur as a result of this specific resource exhaustion, but the study of human behavior in response to the resource shortage is telling.
We've been aware for years that zero IPv4 address availability is going to happen. It's absolutely certain. The only way to make it not happen, or not *care* that it happens, is to do something about the problem. But of course, even for such a technically manageable problem, humanity on the whole chooses to do nothing. The exact same thing will happen for fossil fuel exhaustion, arable land exhaustion, etc.
And now nature will choose for us from the right-hand list of IPv4 exhaustion: here comes corporate greed, lawsuits, slow and inconvenient CGNs (one bad actor in your ISP's network causes you to be banned from the services you use), etc.
Humans are hard-wired to be reactionary, not proactive -- and at that, only reactionary to immediate problems. "Oh, I can't get a new IPv4 address. What do I do?" or "Oh, I can get a new IPv4 address, but it's too expensive. What do I do?" -- These are the kinds of things we will start thinking about, and making people start to care. NOT "Oh, we better deal with this problem that is likely to happen in 5 years."
As flawed as we are, it's probably a good thing that we won't survive long enough to leave our solar system and populate the cosmos. We don't deserve it. We're just too *dumb* as a species.
It didn't matter whether it was last year or next...IP usage was accelerating into the wall anyway. The GOOD part about this is that now the US is out of addresses certain parts of the Internet industry are more likely to take IPv6 seriously.
Sadly, ISPs in other parts of the world have proven adept at further avoiding the problem by downgrading consumer connections to carrier-grade NAT, so we have another 5 years of eking out of old order before people REALLY have to take notice.
Great. Wave your wand, fix every piece of internet infrastructure that regards those reserved addresses as unroutable, and we can put off exhaustion for about 9 months, at best.
Anything you do to IPv4 is nothing but a short-term stop gap. The address space is simply too small for the modern internet.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
285 million addresses reserved for no compelling reason. sure, let's push onwards to ipv6, but saying "our hands are tied" when over 1/16th of the entire space is still available is a bit irritating.
Would you want to be the guy who pokes every existing and legacy system that makes stupid and/or dangerous assumptions about reserved blocks being reserved permanently? You'd hope that that wouldn't be an issue; but finding out could be exciting indeed.
We're running out of free ones. And like any freely available resource, they've been squandered. Once the free supply is exhausted, they'll simply no longer be free - meaning that actual incentive will exist to conserve them and organizations will have incentive to sell unneeded blocks. Economics 101, people.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Now that addresses have run out, they have become a valuable resource for the ISPs that own them. If those ISPs implement IPv6 then there will be no shortage of addresses, and they will lose all their value.
So the monopolist ISPs will now do everything in their power to prevent IPv6 from being adopted.
Finally, Xerox will have a revenue increase?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
I doubt the organizations with those large blocks will sell them unless they become very expensive (which I don't think will happen for a long time). The costs of restructuring the network for a lot of these companies would far outweigh the gains.
What I see as far more likely is ISPs implementing carrier grade NAT as the default, and potentially charging a small fee for those who need a unique IP. The vast majority of users won't care, and as long as getting an IP if you run a game server or use skype or whatever is an easy process, it's actually not a bad solution. I figure we've got 10 years or so before we actually see IPv6 really take off.
Clearly we should have invested years ago in finding renewable sources of IP addresses...
Because there is a very high one-time-only cost involved in switching to ipv6, compared to a small running continuous cost of continuing in ipv4, and for now, it is advantageous to become in ipv4. No one wants to be the one to switch first.
Just think of all sort of problems large ISPs will have to deal in terms of support if they switch to ipv6, in terms of phone service, visits, substitution of cable modems, support for old machines running none/bogus ipv6 implementation.
Just think of all the programs coded years ago, with ipv4 hardwired in (I know 4to6, but your client does not).
Not easy as flick a switch.
So let's finally move on to IPv6. ISPs, I'm looking at you.
I refuse to sign
Most of the ISPs I've dealt with here in Canada do not offer routable IPv6 allocations to users. They certainly don't readily offer static ones for business use like they do with IPv4.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
$ host -t aaaa slashdot.org
slashdot.org has no AAAA record
Except this still won't fix the fact that v4 is simply too small.
Here at DHCP, we're committed to providing only renewable and conflict-free IPs.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Hmmm... sounds like there's a market for selling hardware to mine IPv6 addresses. Just need to set up some sort of exchange...
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Newer mobile phones should have been IPv6 from the beginning. China mandated that years ago. T-Mobile is IPv6. (You can supposedly open up an end to end IPv6 connection between two T-Mobile phones). It's suprising that the cellular phone companies didn't fix this, since they have control of both network and handset.
Addresses were being allocated at a rate of about 2 /8s per month just before IANA's pool was depleted back in 2011.
If a new range of addresses became available, then, barring a policy shift, I would expect them to go at a similar rate, if not faster.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Because there is a very high one-time-only cost involved in switching to ipv6, compared to a small running continuous cost of continuing in ipv4, and for now, it is advantageous to become in ipv4. No one wants to be the one to switch first.
Nobody is switching to IPv6 they are *adding* IPv6. IPv4 is not being turned off by anyone well into the foreseeable future.
Most large content providers are already offering service via IPv6 and millions already have IPv6 access via their ISPs.
Just think of all sort of problems large ISPs will have to deal in terms of support if they switch to ipv6, in terms of phone service, visits, substitution of cable modems, support for old machines running none/bogus ipv6 implementation
The migration to IPv6 takes a while and does not involve turning off IPv4 anytime soon. There is no need to rush to replace gear. It will eventually break or become obsolete in the next few years anyway.
Not easy as flick a switch.
For most consumers it will be easier than a flick of a switch. They get it without having to expend any effort at all or ever even knowing they have it. This happens either immediately or after their old router or CE has broken and gets replaced.