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ARIN Is Down To the Last /8 of IPv4 Addresses

Posted by Unknown on from the end-times dept.

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."

21 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. About time! by drew_92123 · · Score: 4, Funny

    They've been talking about this day for what seems like an eternity... Finally, we can start complaining about something else!

    1. Re:About time! by Anrego · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nah.

      ISPs will just use more carrier grade NAT to free up IPs, maybe charge a little extra if you want your own IP outside of NAT to run game servers or skype or whatever (a relatively small group). Should hold of IPv6 for another 10 years or so.

    2. Re:About time! by cold+fjord · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And hopefully more large companies and organizations that hold large blocks of public IP addresses will start moving to private IP addresses and release the public IP addresses for use by others. I know some places that have large numbers of systems with public IP addresses that are behind firewalls and really have no business having a public IP address on those systems anymore.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    3. Re:About time! by mikael_j · · Score: 5, Informative

      That would have about as much effect as pissing into the ocean would have on raising sea levels.

      We need to move to IPv6 and if you're not prepared then yes, it will cost you more than if you had a bit of foresight and didn't keep buying IPv4-only software and hardware right up till the very end.

      --
      Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
    4. Re:About time! by QuantumRiff · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Without looking, what is the IP address of slashdot? Oh, you don't care because there is DNS?

      --

      What are we going to do tonight Brain?
    5. Re:About time! by stderr_dk · · Score: 3, Funny

      Without looking, what is your static IPv6 address? ;)

      ::1/128

      --
      alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" ; # https://pipedot.org/~stderr & http://soylentnews.org/~stderr
    6. Re:About time! by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No one really imagined in the 70s that there would be a need for more IP addresses than people.

  2. Wasn't allocation always the problem? by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!
    1. Re:Wasn't allocation always the problem? by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

      Nope, it takes longer for existing tenants to vacate space than it has been for ARIN to allocate new addresses (ie it would take MIT 5 years to re-engineer their network to free up say half of their allocation, but at the rate we've been using new addresses that space would last less than 10 days, so why should an organization put in 5 years of work to help with 10 days of usage?) so the solution is IPv6.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    2. Re:Wasn't allocation always the problem? by jareth-0205 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I was going to post the same thing.

      If they raise the cost of blocks of addresses sufficiently, many orgs will relinquish their under-utilized addresses and get a smaller block.

      And what? We'll buy ourselves another couple of years, at the most? Just fix the problem now and we don't have to worry about this anymore.

    3. Re:Wasn't allocation always the problem? by medv4380 · · Score: 3, Funny

      IPv6 is the re-engineer the network solution.

  3. Re:Phase Four!?!? Oh noes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    I've got a whole block of IPv6 addresses available, cheap... act now, before the rush!

  4. A useful case study because it's not catastrophic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  5. It didn't matter whether it was last year or next by gjh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  6. We are not anywhere near running out of addresses. by ErikTheRed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  7. Re:It didn't matter whether it was last year or ne by badfish99 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:We are not anywhere near running out of address by pr0nbot · · Score: 5, Funny

    Clearly we should have invested years ago in finding renewable sources of IP addresses...

  9. Re:And yet Akamai deserves a /10 by PRMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Akamai is one of the few companies in the US that is actually using a large allocation they were given. They're the LAST ones you should be complaining about.

    --
    Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
  10. Re:We are not anywhere near running out of address by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?
  11. 4G mobile should have been IPv6 only by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  12. Re:1/8 and 240/8-255/8 by compro01 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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