
ARIN allocated free IPv4 addresses almost exhausted - brohee
http://lists.si6networks.com/pipermail/ipv6hackers/2013-December/001415.html
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wilhil
RIPE is pretty much out now, they only allocate a single /22 to new
registrants, or a /24 to existing members, and that is it.

Working at a new startup ISP, and sort of seeing this from the inside, I think
the whole process is a complete joke.

ANYONE who wants IPs can _easily_ get them, average cost is about £10-£20
each, and a whole ip broker industry seems to have popped up over the last few
years... Just google "Buy IP address", "IP Broker" or similar.

The guidelines state that when you are not using an IP, you simply hand it
back - but - I don't think ANYONE does this, and why would they as they are
both free, there is no verification/auditing _, and they are now like gold
dust.

_ Auditing is basically just a list of IPs and saying what you are using them
for.

Companies approach all the time saying that they have xx IPs for sale, and the
official line when you ask "why are they available" is usually, "we can
reorganise our network so we no longer require them"... In reality, I am sure
they apply entire ranges to bogus interfaces just to make them look in use.

It really annoys me that this side of the industry doesn't get more exposure!

~~~
cpach
Wouldn’t it be better if IANA or the regional Internet registries directly
rented out the IP addresses to the ISP:s/companies who need them? Why let a
middle-man collect the profits?

~~~
bradleyjg
Yes. Best would be a formula that increased the per ip cost the more ips you
had. That would have at least two advantages: first it would pressure the
legacy class A holders who are collectively sitting on 100M+ not publicly used
addresses; second it would make it unprofitable to hoard and resell.

The current method resembles water law in the US western states, which is just
about the worst possible way to allocate access to a limited resource.

------
ay
Remember the World IPv6 day ? In 2014 a few of us (about a hundred of folks
around the world at the moment) are going to do a "World IPv6 only day" (turn
off IPv4) on the 06/06/2014, for ourselves. If we can't work successfully
during this day using IPv6 only - then we'll take a day off (Conveniently,
it's Friday).

If you are someone doing computer networking professionally - why not join us
?

We're tracking the count of those who will turn the legacy IP off for a day
via an Avaaz "petition to all the computer professionals".

[http://preview.tinyurl.com/noipv4](http://preview.tinyurl.com/noipv4)

~~~
justincormack
But we won't be able to browse Hacker News! (Even though they use Cloudflare
now and could just turn on the AAAA records).

~~~
ay
Yeah maybe if we all ask pg nicely, he will do it ? :)

As a backup plan - cloud-based NAT64 is a fair game for the day, search "go6
nat64".

~~~
justincormack
I never tried nat64. If github got their shit together and installed ipv6 I
would be very happy...

~~~
ay
In github case since it's server side only and FOSS, they could probably go
even further and go v6only and do stateless translation for ipv4 clients.

But that's a bit too hardcore :-)

~~~
justincormack
I don;t mind so long as I can stop running NAT so my test VMs can pull from
github when everything else they do runs over v6... (actually buildbot doesn't
work over v6 only either).

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InTheSwiss
I worked at Xerox for 8 years as a Solution Architect and it annoyed me so
damn much that they are sitting on 13.* yet hardly using it and I can't
imagine that has changed in the few years since I left. From what I can
remember they were using less than 20% of the address space they have.

Then again running out of v4 addresses is the best thing to happen really.
Still it annoys me a big company can sit on so many addresses for no reason.

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davidw
Economics being the study of scarce resources, this is basically something
that should be viewed through that lens. As the good becomes more scarce, it
stands to reason that the price will go up and 1) encourage people to use them
more efficiently, and 2) encourage people to look at alternatives like ipv6.
It's probably a bit more complex in some ways, but I think the basic logic
makes sense.

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tankenmate
And ISPs in the US will do what ISPs did elsewhere; point to their IPv6 trial
as "evidence" of their IPv6 rollout and continue to consume IPv4 address space
until the disaster hits. Also more and more ISPs will prefer to roll out
Carrier Grade NAT (CGNAT) than bother to update the firmware and configuration
of their routers and more importantly due to substandard consumer home routers
and other CPE; expect your games and P2P based software that doesn't support
UPnP port forwarding to choke.

~~~
anonymfus
>Carrier Grade NAT

>that doesn't support UPnP port forwarding

Wait, there are Carrier Grade NATs with UPnP support?

~~~
tankenmate
Most don't you are right, but some are toying with the idea of proxying UPnP
requests to "NAT Centres" on the carriers backbone; there are a significant
percentage of users who will refuse to put down their controllers and will
walk to another provider.

The other way this may be solved is to form a technology solution with the
console makers to have a drop in solution at the API level; obviously this
will disadvantage smaller developers who can't pay to play (not that this will
bother the carriers overly).

I suspect most likely in the US there will be a nuisance fee add on to your
internet connection in order to play "P2P" games (x.ref current Net Nutrality
battles in the courts)

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exabrial
Not a big fan of ipv6... It did nothing to solve the global routing table size
problem (in fact it made the problem much much worse). As a small network
administrator, it adds nothing but headaches and will not increase the
profitability of the company in any way.

The only incentive right now is doomsday predictions and honestly there are
better things to worry about. I'm hoping ipv6 gets an update and they design a
more realistically usable protocol that offers advantages to the little guys.

~~~
jlgaddis
_> It did nothing to solve the global routing table size problem_

Well, at the time it was designed there was no "global routing table size
problem".

~~~
exabrial
Good point actually...

The problem is the "Global Routing table size problem" is a problem we
actually have _right meow_, whereas the impending omg-out-of-ipv4-address
problems is one that will stretch on for another 40+ years.

If IPv6 actually solved the problem we have right now, people would adopt it.
But IPv6 solves no current problems, it only creates new current problems.

Anyway, I know IETF pisses vinegar all over NAT, but I'm hoping a grassroots
effort pops up to solve the problem IPv6 should have actually solved.

All we really need is forward-compatible extension to IPv4 that allows for
easier incoming NAT traversal. A working solution would allow border routers
to identify traffic belonging to an individual host on their network (in the
private address space), while the client remains blissfully happy on
traditional IPv4.

The goal would be, merely update your border router to speak this extension to
IPv4... rather than every device on your network and oh by the way, rewrite
half the software you have that parses ipv4 addresses.

~~~
zanny
Currently I have to jump hoops through some bullcrap NAT maze of a public
Internet to interact with anyone else.

Properly distributed ipv6 addresses would fix that.

So it does solve a problem I have now, in that I'd rather just tell people to
click the accept connection button when I generate inbound traffic on their
ipv6 address than to get them to figure out how to port forward off a router
they have never touched the interface of before.

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ldng
IMHO, nothing is going to happen upon IPv4 exhaustion. IPv4 will become a
luxury good whose price will rise quickly.

Which leads me to wonder if the Internet at large isn't at a crossroad. Either
IPv6 and Net Neutrality are adopted or a market (and a black market ?) is
created for IPv4. Add to that the end of net neutrality and we'll enjoy the
return of Compuserve/AOL and the demise of small independent entrepreneurship
on the internet because of the higher cost of entry.

Granted, it's worst case scenario, yet not impossible.

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iptrading
We have been brokering IPv4 addresses for many years, we brokered half the
bids for the watershed sale of 660,000 addresses from Nortel to Microsoft in
2011. Because of the inter-regional transfers allowed between ARIN and APNIC,
we consider that a single market. ARIN/APNIC prices are right around $8US per
address. RIPE has no inter-regional transfer policy, and prices in RIPE are
around $10US per address. Leasing of space is also available.

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jlgaddis
ARIN IPv4 Countdown Plan:
[https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_countdown.html](https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_countdown.html)

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brohee
Edit: I was wrong, most of the addresses on that page have been allocated.

This is a bit disingenuous btw, they are down to 1.5 /8 in the class A space,
but have quit a few more /8 in class b and class C space.

See
[https://www.arin.net/knowledge/ip_blocks.html](https://www.arin.net/knowledge/ip_blocks.html)

Still, people not having a plan should really hurry...

~~~
jlgaddis
No, there are only the equivalent of 1.5 /8s altogether.

~~~
brohee
Yup, some ARIN pages are a bit unclear about what is spent and what is not, I
got a bit confused by it...

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Sami_Lehtinen
It has happaned earlier for other regions (RIPE & APNIC) and nobody really
cared about it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion#Exhaus...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion#Exhaustion_dates_and_impact)

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riobard
What about adopting a subscription model? Let's say $10/IP/year. We are
already doing this for an effectively infinite name space (domain names). The
very limited IPv4 name space should be more expensive, right?

~~~
jlgaddis
There actually is one, although it's a bit cheaper than that:

See, e.g.,
[https://www.arin.net/fees/fee_schedule.html](https://www.arin.net/fees/fee_schedule.html)

