North America Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses

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.

Comments

Re:It's the end of the world as we know it!

[Daimanta]

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.

Just reuse them...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Just reuse them...

[Megane]

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.

Re:The addresses are there... but still...

[drinkypoo]

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.

Privacy?

[hcs_$reboot]

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).

Re:Privacy?

[kc9jud]

...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.

Re:I've tried turning IPV4 off..

[OrangeTide]

I fail to see the problem.