America Runs Out of IPv4 Internet Addresses

FireFury03 writes: The BBC is reporting that the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) ran out of spare IP addresses yesterday. "Companies in North America should now accelerate their move to the latest version of the net's addressing system. Now Africa is the only region with any significant blocks of the older version 4 internet addresses available." A British networking company that supplies schools has done an analysis on how concerned IT managers should be. This comes almost exactly 3 years after Europe ran out.

Comments

America! F-Yeah!

[sinij]

Out of IP addresses? Sounds like a good time to invade somewhere where they mine them!

Re:America! F-Yeah!

[Ol Olsoc]

They already found a new source of IP addresses which could support everyone with enough IP addresses to the end of time

Another liberal scare tactic.

We have plenty of IP addresses to go around, and any right thinking American knows that there is a controversy, and that not all scientists believe in this hogwash.

Re:America! F-Yeah!

[grahamsz]

Like who? MIT Is the only school i see that still has a class A

The most obvious people who should be giving them up are

a) HP - who have TWO class As and I believe around 7 employees.
b) Apple - have a class A and as far as I know don't run any significant external networking.
c) IBM - kinda like apple. they did have a networking business at one point but I believe that's sold to AT&T now
d) Halibutron - just why?
e) Prudential Insurance - wtf? in what possible world do they need 16 million external addresses?

Re:Move to the latest version?

[ledow]

If you are typing or using IP addresses for ANYTHING other than you primary DNS servers, you're doing something wrong.

Seriously - set statics on your DNS servers (which can even be IPv4!), plug that into your DHCP etc. servers. Done.

This is the problem with IPv6 - those people whining about it aren't in charge of networks where it could be an issue anyway.

P.S. likely your mobile phone and maybe even your cable setup has been using IPv6 addresses for a few years now. They are specified and necessary in related standards. Did you notice? No. Because nobody types in IP addresses any more, not even on their home networks, work networks, thousands of servers, etc.

To be honest, MAC addresses are much more problematic to me, but I barely ever have to type those either.

Re:Boy cries wolf

[Alioth]

The real WTF is that Slashdot has been running IPv6 articles for years...and *still* doesn't support IPv6.

Facebook on the other hand - not a tech site, but a site for angsty teenagers, baby pics, cat memes and partisan squabbling - has supported IPv6 fully for years.

It's embarrassing that a tech site can't do what a non-tech site has been doing for years.

Comments Summarised

[thegarbz]

- What are we running out again? I thought we ran out last month! They are crying wolf!
- IP addresses are assigned by region we only just ran out.

- NAT makes this a non issue. Just use NAT!
- NAT is a broken concept that breaks end-to-end connectivity!

- I won't move to IPv6 they are too hard to type.
- Why are you typing IPv6?

- I can't NAT on IPv6 so it breaks my firewall and its insecure.
- NAT is not a firewall, you can firewall IPv6

- Why don't we just steal some of HP's IP addresses? They have some spare.
- Break the internet by splitting up routing tables even further.

- But NAT has protected us for many years everything works on NAT.
- Everything now needs to connect to a command server. No end-to-end connectivity and nasty workarounds in routers to make applications work.

- But DHCP doesn't work for IPv6!
- DHCP isn't needed, and if it is needed yes it does.

- But we can NAT the NATTING NAT NAT!
- Go fuck your NAT.