
Less Than 1 Year Until The Internet Runs Out of Addresses - ssclafani
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/less_than_1_year_until_the_internet_runs_out_of_addresses.php
======
tptacek
The world isn't going to end when we "run out of IPv4 addresses", because it
can't: a huge portion of all the world's networking software can't deal with
IPv6 addresses and can't be forklifted out.

The train has already left the station on NAT; end-users (and components in
the "internet of things") expect transient addresses, and large-scale apps are
designed so that rendezvous points are the only things that need fixed
addressing.

Meanwhile, we'll eventually hit a point of scarcity with IPv4 addresses where
allocations will stop being political and become market-driven instead.

Finally, all talk about a shangri-la of direct v6 addressing ignores the fact
that no matter how quickly ISPs adopt the protocols, and even after the
majority of Internet software that end-users demand are ported to handle v6
addressing, BGP routing still isn't going to scale to individual direct
addresses. What's the current situation on prefix filtering at the major ISPs?
How easy is it to get a /24 (even) portable?

~~~
ay
Here's a link to think about:

[http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090609_verizon_mandates_ipv6...](http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090609_verizon_mandates_ipv6_support_for_next_gen_cell_phones/)

"The device shall support IPv6. The device may support IPv4"

This is requirements for the LTE devices from Verizon. Of course all the
devices being linux-based, I expect dualstack for quite some time.

As for provider-independent addresses, I understand you should be able to get
/48: <http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-483.html>

As for the Locator-ID split problem (which what the BGP scaling problem is
about), there are a number of experiments going on at the moment. LISP
(<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-farinacci-lisp>) is one of them. There was
a few more but with less memorable names (edit: memorable for me. because I
did hear more about LISP)

Of course the world is not going to end. It will just start developing an ever
increasing slice of IPv6-only, whereas IPv4 growth is bounded.

Google, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix are already IPv6-enabled. This is "The
Internet" for your average mom and pop consumer type. And maintaining the NATs
with the few million hosts behind is a bit of work. So I would not be
surprised if a cheaper "IPv6-only internet" options might emerge.

Full disclosure: my day job is at cisco. And untangling the creative NAT
configurations and bugs caused by them has paid my bills for the past 10
years. Everything posted here is my personal opinion and not of my employer.

~~~
tptacek
Or,

"The device SHALL support IPv6. The device MAY support the Internet."

Pure grandstanding.

------
olefoo
The real problem isn't address exhaustion, it's managing the migration from
IPv4 to IPv6 and running mixed networks in the interim. I deal with 3 ISPs on
a regular basis. Of which only 1 (Comcast, surprisingly enough) has their act
together and can provide you with IPv6 connectivity. Meanwhile out of 5
datacenters I regularly deal with there is not a single one that can provide a
direct IPv6 routing to the rack. So for the moment, at least for the networks
I deal with it's IPv4 and tunneled IPv6 and given the nature of the business,
IPv6 is really not on my priority list, and won't be until it actually saves
people enough money to cover the switching costs.

------
ck2
There are many corporations hording Class B blocks. Lots of them. Time to use
them or lose them.

This is also a Windows problem believe it or not.

Class E block has 268 million addresses but no existing version of Windows
will see/talk to them.

~~~
mcs
The E block is really 'reserved' and 'meant for test purposes'.

If Windows can't talk to those IP addresses they're actually within spec.
Though it is a useless waste of a lot of bits.

------
mcs
I figure one change that will happen at the beginning of this "crisis" will be
that ISPs will start NATing traffic, as tptacek said.

A lot of ISPs already have policies for not having daemons on ports, so they
could use that as justification for not having your own IP completely
accessible from every port (which I don't believe would be possible without
explicit port forwarding from the ISP itself).

What would this mean for end users' internet? Not much, but IPv4 IPs would be
shared by multiple users (hopefully not many at first). A lot of websites have
session policies and all sorts of mess based on the remote address, so it will
be interesting to see how the aging webapps deal with the change.

I figure servers will get first priority at v4 addresses. Yeah, there's
useless crap going on like IRC vhosts, but I figure once the market closes in
on the addresses people will likely sell them (hell, I know people squatting
on address blocks until the 'apocalypse', thinking they'll score a huge
profit!).

Fun times.

~~~
quux
But wouldn't the end users be behind a double NAT in this scenario? (ISP's
nat, end user's router's NAT.) Lots of voip protocols break when they try to
deal with double NAT, and I'm sure there are other that will break too.

~~~
ay
Even single NAT is not trivial when a few hundred thousands of active users
are behind it, just because of the sheer scale.

For a major part of the users "The Internet" == "The Web", and applications
like Skype use any available transport including avian carriers, this limits
the impact.

But does having NAT increase the code complexity and increase the maintenance
cost ? It does.

So, I would treat it as a short-term high-interest loan. If you do not have
other choice - sure, go for it. But if you can avoid it - you will avoid a
couple of gray hairs too.

------
cellshade
This is just until the last /8 is assigned to an RIR, right? There will still
be plenty of IPs available in many locations throughout the world... it'll
just be North America that will have a hard time of it.

~~~
kijeda
Why North America? For the most part North America has mature deployment of
Internet services. What is really driving IP address exhaustion right now is
Asia where millions are coming online for the first time. They are the ones
that will have a hard time when unused IPv4 addresses become scarce.

~~~
cellshade
I would think that in places without heavily established infrastructure, it
would be much easier to deploy straight to IPv6.

------
chrisbolt
Perhaps the only reason we're running out of IPv4 addresses is because you can
still get large blocks of IPs for questionable reasons like "IRC vhosts" and
"proxies"...

<http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.arin.ppml/8304>

Plus, both internet connections at my workplace gave us 6 IPs without us even
asking for them.

~~~
dedward
Plus, you _can't_ get smaller blocks allocated even w hen you need them.... I
have a legitimate need for an independent /24 that I can BGP route around to a
few datacenters. ARIN says I can only apply for a /22 at the smallest. People
are forced to apply for more address space than they really need in order to
get any at all.

As for hte reasons "WHY" - it was never supposed to be a judgement as to
relative value - only that they were actually needed and going to be used. IP
addresses were never meant to have value in the first place.

~~~
chrisbolt
Fortunately that's very close to changing. The ARIN Advisory Council
recommended adoption a month ago and now it is just awaiting board review.

<https://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2010_2.html>

------
runjake
Not to make light of the situation, but I've been hearing this same thing for
the past 6 years. It gets a little old and diminishes the message.

* We already have our /48 bought & deployed in production.

------
cedsav
Make me wonder why our hosting provider keeps handing over 6 IP addresses for
free each time we order a server (we usually don't need them).

~~~
cb18
What is the company, and are you otherwise happy with their service?

~~~
cedsav
Softlayer, and yeah, they're great (at least on their dedicated hardware, not
sure about their cloud services).

------
fleitz
The internet will not run out of IP addresses, a market will develop for
internet addresses and as price increases those that own IP blocks will sell
them to those that need them.

There might be a business in there setting up a clearing house for IP
addresses.

------
jarek
Four syllables: IPv6.

------
bhiggins
I heard that a year ago.

