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North America Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses

Posted by timothy on from the well-sorta dept.

DW100 writes: The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has been forced to reject a request for more IPv4 addresses for the first time as its stock of remaining address reaches exhaustion. The lack of IPv4 addresses has led to renewed calls for the take-up of IPv6 addresses in order to start embracing the next era of the internet.

7 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. It's the end of the world as we know it! by Chas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The sky is falling!

    The sky is falling!

    It hit me on the head! *OW! NOT THAT ONE!*

    "Runs out".

    Yeah. Okay. And how many companies are sitting on vast blocks that are only partially tapped?

    This isn't so much an issue of lack (though at some point it'll become that).
    It's an issue created by how assignment of address blocks was and is managed.

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
    1. Re:It's the end of the world as we know it! by Daimanta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Trying to get companies with big internet presence to return their allocated blocks to the (ARIN)-pool would take for too much time and effort and is without any form of guarantee. Furthermore, even if they would manage to return the blocks to the pool in a couple of years, it would both be too late and too little and the demand for address space far outpaces the supply that ipv4 can offer. Realistically, ipv6 is the only long-term solution for any part of the world even including Africa as the increase of internet availability on the continent will rapidly consume their own pool. Hopefully, the African states are smart enough to push for an ipv6-enabled infrastructure.

      --
      Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
    2. Re:It's the end of the world as we know it! by halltk1983 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why would they return something that they could sell?

      --
      Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
    3. Re:It's the end of the world as we know it! by Ultra64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >And how many companies are sitting on vast blocks that are only partially tapped?

      Good idea, let's make those companies give up their /8s.

      That should give us a few more weeks worth of IP addresses.

  2. Re:The addresses are there... but still... by xaxa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's correct to use assigned addresses for internal hosts. The point is they're unique — you can set up a tunnel between any two organisations, or merge two networks, and not have to renumber things because both were using 10/8.

    The cost to renumber and use their assignment more efficiently would be huge, similar to the cost to move to IPv6 but with little gain.

  3. Re:Wasn't this originally predicted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It wasn't crying wolf, at that time the growth was amazing and the policies for handing out IPs were much looser. They also didn't factor in for the facts that the policies would be changed and people would NAT NAT as Xzibit hadn't yet taught us about doing things while we're doing things. If NAT hadn't become so common we would have run out of IP addresses a very long time ago.

    If they hadn't "cried wolf" then, I can only imagine how long ago we would have hit this point as we wouldn't have made adjustments to practices to push it into the future.

    It's amazing how many morons will see that the rate at which a massive problem is coming is slower than anticipated and conclude that it's not a real problem. It's usually better to err on the side of caution and expedience as you rarely do things to quickly with regards to large problems.

  4. Re: It won't work that way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you think "routable" and "insecure" are synonyms, you're going to have a hell of a time with IPv6