
Coming This Summer: U.S. Will Run Out of Internet Addresses - abetaha
http://www.wsj.com/articles/coming-this-summer-u-s-will-run-out-of-internet-addresses-1431479401?mod=LS1
======
IvyMike
Always interesting to check Google's report on IPv6 use by their users.

[https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html](https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html)

tldr: Consistently above 5%, almost reaching 7% on weekends. The gap between
weekday and weekend IPv6 usage is widening, indicating that home ISPs are
moving faster than businesses.

~~~
isaacdl
I love playing with this graph. Anyone have any idea why there was an
unusually high (for the time) spike on Oct 4th, 2014?

~~~
amenghra
Mobile operators in USA started to roll ipv6?
([http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2014/10/t-mobi...](http://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/blog/2014/10/t-mobile-
usa-hits-43-ipv6-verizon-wireless-at-59-att-at-25-in-oct-2014-measurements/))

~~~
kstrauser
Probably. I recently discovered that my Verizon iPhone is now connecting to my
home NAS via IPv6.

------
ohitsdom
I'm surprised to learn that cloud computing solutions (EC2, Azure) don't
already support IPv6. Can anyone share why this is? I would think the switch
is inevitable. What roadblocks are in the way for enabling this?

~~~
chimeracoder
> I'm surprised to learn that cloud computing solutions (EC2, Azure) don't
> already support IPv6.

Lots and lots of parts of the networking stack (esp. when talking about both
virtual _and_ hardware interfaces) either don't support IPv6, or didn't until
very recently. For example: OpenVPN didn't support IPv6 until last year, and
even today, you're hard-pressed to find a commercial VPN provider that
provides IPv6 support, despite the fact that IPv4-only means that there's a
massive privacy hole when using it unless IPv6 is explicitly disabled[0].

Also, it's very expensive to move existing systems over without risking any
potential downtime or performance impact for existing customers. This is one
of the reasons that new and smaller providers (like Digital Ocean) are more
likely to support it than the bigger names (and even Digital Ocean didn't
support IPv6 until very recently).

I don't have direct experience with this myself, but this is what my contacts
at AWS and other companies told me.

[0] [https://blog.dave.io/2011/06/vpn-
ipv6-privacy/](https://blog.dave.io/2011/06/vpn-ipv6-privacy/)

~~~
gpvos
I still don't get it. Cloud services are a recent thing, and they are bringing
hundreds of servers online every day. This is _prime territory_ for ipv6.

~~~
Symbiote
I took my first look at Google's offering last week.

You can set up a MySQL database, which has an IPv6 address by default. The
documentation[1] says

> Each instance has an IPv6 address that is free to use. To connect over IPv4,
> > you must explicitly assign an IPv4 addresss to your instance, which incurs
> a > charge per hour idle.

IPv4 sounded like a hassle, so I tried to use the IPv6 address from my Google
Compute Engine instance. But that doesn't support IPv6. It's the oldest
outstanding feature request [2].

(Perhaps other parts of Google's cloud offering support IPv6, I haven't used
much else so far.)

[1] [https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/mysql-client#connect-
ipv6](https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/mysql-client#connect-ipv6)

[2] [https://code.google.com/p/google-compute-
engine/issues/detai...](https://code.google.com/p/google-compute-
engine/issues/detail?id=8)

------
evbots
no paywall
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newss...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB0QqQIoADAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fcoming-
this-summer-u-s-will-run-out-of-internet-
addresses-1431479401&ei=5INTVZmAGKu0sATh0IDwDQ&usg=AFQjCNEQXpxadyHY90CuQ-9XFP3U02cVhA&sig2=UlasGvEmr41zzV1pxZGSyQ)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Still paywalled, actually. They're smarter than that. ;) You have to actually
search from Google.

Also, they're discriminatory, it does not work from Bing, only from Google.

~~~
adam12
The link worked for me.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Interesting. Did you click their link before clicking on the original WSJ
link? I'm wondering if they try to detect people using this workaround when
they hit the paywall or something.

~~~
adam12
Yes, I clicked their link and got the paywall and then I used the google link
above and got through.

It's only working for me in Chrome though- not in Firefox or IE.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Ah, yeah, I'm on Firefox.

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chrisBob
I know that ipV6 is theoretically better for me, but I am not looking forward
to the day that instead of 192.168.1.1, I have to type in
fd42:caae:ee42:0001:0001 with my phone keyboard.

Is there any reason to think I won't need to occasionally type in full ip
addresses after this switch?

~~~
krupan
Um, DNS? Bookmarks? Why do you have to type IP addresses into your phone?

~~~
Cantremeber
Two things I can see popping up:

Router management pages

internal network stuff in places small enough not to have internal dns (Where
I work we have like five NASs all accessed by IP, at home I have a plex server
in the same boat)

~~~
fragmede
> Router management pages

For home use, many current generation router/AP boxes are powerful enough to
run a local DNS server (in addition to DHCP) and often hardcode a DNS entry
for configuration, eg [http://router](http://router)

> internal network stuff in places small enough

The .local domain (ie [http://hostname.local](http://hostname.local)) has been
a functional out of the box for many years now on osx/linux and NetBIOS have
worked on Windows since forever.

------
betaby
In Europe, RIPE has market place for that. You can even see transfers there
[https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/resource-
transfers-...](https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/resource-transfers-
and-mergers/ipv4-transfers/table-of-transfers)

------
Animats
As the mobile providers convert over, this will be less of a problem. T-Mobile
just did. China did years ago.

------
kylec
There are lots of underutilized IPv4 addresses out there. I'm sure there are
lots of companies and institutions squatting on /8s that would sell some of
their block for the right price.

~~~
kstrauser
The problem is that uptake is growing exponentially. I've seen the math where
if _all_ /8s were returned for immediate reallocation, that would delay the
IPocalypse by like 3 months. It's just not worth the extraordinary legal
hassle required to pry those netblocks away from their owners (many of whom
are probably actually using them in some capacity and have zero interest in
willfully migrating out of them).

------
giltleaf
Unless I'm way off, it definitely seems possible that this could translate to
higher prices for consumers. Does anyone have any idea what those changes
might look like?

------
mandazi
How can I determine my site or my host is using IPv6?

~~~
PaulAJ
If you Google for "what is my ip?" then Google will tell you. If it looks like
"12.34.56.78" (known as "dotted quad") then your computer is using IPv4. If it
looks like "FE80:0000:0000:0000:0202:B3FF:FE1E:8329" or
"FE80::0202:B3FF:FE1E:8329" then you are using IPv6.

~~~
ghshephard
It's ironic that 12.34.56.78 is known as dotted quad, but www.acme.com 86400
IN AAAA fd::1 is known as a Quad-A.

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colanderman
Also this summer Voyager 1 will leave the solar system!

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eonw
isnt this what ipv6 is for?

