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