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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.

20 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Because they can't sell it. As the current ruler of Microsoft, John Thompson, admitted, they broke the rules intentionally when they bought a block of addresses from Nortel in 2011. ICANN talked about taking action, but backed down after Gates picked a dishonest and untrustworthy moron like Thompson that has political connections to the White House. Obama said Thompson was on the short list for Commerce Secretary, and has admitted that Microsoft has unlimited access to the Oval Office. Thompson is very well connected. That is why Gates appointed him to run Microsoft despite the fact he isn't that bright and has recently shown very bad signs of Alzheimer's wrt his confused and contradictory statements on how much Microsoft plans to charge for Windows 10 subscriptions for the "free" upgrade. We still don't know how badly those of us who take the "free" upgrade are going to be screwed in the long run.

    4. 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. Just reuse them... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Everyone I know just uses 127.0.0.1. What do we need all these new ones for?

    1. Re:Just reuse them... by Megane · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Also, the "Class D" (multicast) address space (224/4) is extremely under-utilized (IIRC, only 3 of the 16 /8s are even used), and IPv4 multicast is mostly a failure anyhow.

      And the "Class E" space (240/4) is unusable because the TCP/IP stack in Windows NT and later was explicitly coded to consider those as bad addresses and not even attempt to communicate with them. Thanks a lot, anal-retentive programmer-guy.

      Those two together account for 32 "Class A" equivalent addresses, or one eighth of the IPv4 address space.

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
    2. Re:Just reuse them... by Al+Al+Cool+J · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wait - so we could have a whole section of the internet that Windows computers fundamentally can't access? Sign me up!

  3. I've got some I can sell ya by Snotnose · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm only using 8 addresses out of my 192.168.1.1/24 class C block, I could probably be talked into auctioning off the other 240+ addresses. Call me, maybe?

  4. Re:The addresses are there... but still... by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    these companies (which I'd love to name) missed the boat when IPv4 address costs (for sale) was highest and are actually waiting for this next "crisis" in hopes that they can get billions for Class A nets (these companies date back to "the beginning" and the use their Class A addresses for non-Internet facing internal addressing (that is they are wasting the addresses) simply because they lack the skills to change).

    IBM has the technical know-how to stop using routable addresses internally, but their class A is part of their culture. I imagine the same is true for other class A holders.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. Re:Cell phone uses IPv6 by funwithBSD · · Score: 4, Funny

    Meh.

    Whatever.

    --
    Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
  6. Privacy? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My cell phone has been on IPv6 for years. Everything I have is ready for the conversion. What is holding it up?

    There is a small interesting detail about IPv6 that is almost never mentioned. An IPv6 address counts 128 bits. Typically the "top" 64 bits are provided by your ISP and will be used to route the packets through the Internet. The 64 remaining LSb have to be unique within the subnet (typically a LAN), and usually these 64 bits are made from the MAC address of the interface linked to this IPv6 address (padded if 48 bits). That means for instance that knowing your IPv6 address, someone is likely to know also your MAC address (of the device used), that is usually the maker/configurator of the NIC (eg Apple, MS ...). And if the shop where you bought the device keep track of your MAC address - like Apple for instance - they may be able to identify you precisely, based on your IPv6 address (eg when you access their web site).

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    1. Re:Privacy? by kc9jud · · Score: 5, Informative

      ...and usually these 64 bits are made from the MAC address of the interface linked to this IPv6 address (padded if 48 bits).

      I think what you're looking for is RFC 4941, Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6:

      This document describes an extension to IPv6 stateless address autoconfiguration for interfaces whose interface identifier is derived from an IEEE identifier. Use of the extension causes nodes to generate global scope addresses from interface identifiers that change over time, even in cases where the interface contains an embedded IEEE identifier. Changing the interface identifier (and the global scope addresses generated from it) over time makes it more difficult for eavesdroppers and other information collectors to identify when different addresses used in different transactions actually correspond to the same node.

  7. 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.

  8. Damn kids. by AnotherBlackHat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Get off my internet!

  9. Re:People are scared of IPV6 by Bert64 · · Score: 4, Informative

    All the routers i've seen implement statefull filtering on ipv6 and allow all outbound and no inbound (except traffic related to an outbound connection) by default, which is functionally identical to their ipv4 nat implementation.

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  10. I've tried turning IPV4 off.. by jcr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Every couple of weeks or so, I turn off V4 to see what happens. /. is one of the sites that I can't reach when I do.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    1. Re:I've tried turning IPV4 off.. by OrangeTide · · Score: 5, Funny

      I fail to see the problem.

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  11. 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.

  12. 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