

IPv4 address exhaustion and the end of the open net - corbet
http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/424696/65ff89415ac61dc4/

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bryanlarsen
Reminder: this is a link to LWN, one of the few places on the internet that I
know of where the comments are consistently more knowledgeable and more
insightful than hacker news, in my opinion.

So read the original article, but more importantly, read the comments.

~~~
bryanlarsen
But they really need a way to vote up comments, because there are a lot of
them, it'd be nice to have the gems float to the top...

~~~
ominous_prime
I agree. After living on proggit, then HN for so long, I really miss not
having a way to vote on the comments. Even more than getting the good comments
to the top, I would like to get the off-topic, pointless, or factually
incorrect threads to the bottom. often, an early comment in isn't directly
relevant, but may spawn a long discussion.

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Perceval
This reminds me of how geopoliticians wrote about the closure of uncolonized
spaces around the turn of the last century. The Turner thesis looked at the
effect of the open frontier on America and speculated in the political and
economic consequences of the exhaustion of 'free' land. Halford Mackinder
noted the closure of the final pieces of colonizable land and argued that
conflicts between major powers would increase now that the safety valve of
expansion was lost.

Now that 'cyberspace' is facing the closure of free 'space' we are seeing
similar arguments being put forward about the economic changes that we will
face in the new political-economy of a closed Internet.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Thesis>

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martinkallstrom
We engineers really blew it with Y2K. Now when real shit goes down, people
think we cry wolf.

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simias

        But we're going to have to live with the consequences, which include running dual stacks for a transition period that, he thinks, could easily take ten years.
    

I have a hard time imagining that happen. What I think would happen in such a
situation is that some $newcoolsite will for some reason or an other run only
on IPv6 and all the cool kids in the block will make sure to upgrade their
equipment to be able to use it or even pressuring their ISPs if they're not
IPv6-ready.

After all, even windows XP supports IPv6 with the right service pack, if I
recall correctly. I think all the equipment I own is IPv6-ready, if not yet
IPv6-enabled.

As for the domestic routers that only support IPv4, aren't most of those only
there to do NAT in the first place?

10 years is a hell of a long time in internet time.

~~~
btilly
If $newcoolsite only runs on IPV6, nobody will use it and it will quickly
become $deadwannabesite. This is a very big chicken and egg problem.

~~~
Dylanlacey
This is a problem that Mr Incumbent Benevolent Internet God could solve, IF
Google wanted too.

"Dear The Internet. We are switching to IPv6. We STRONGLY suggest you do the
same. If you don't, your customers WILL cry and WILL migrate to the other
carriers, because they're not going to give _us_ up.

Love and Packets, Google.

PS: We know everything your CEO has ever searched for. Yes. Even "THAT"."

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JoachimSchipper
> [An ISP-level] NAT router will have to handle large numbers of connections
> simultaneously, to the point that it will run out of port numbers. Ports
> numbers are only 16 bits, after all.

That's only if you track NAT by <my_port> only; just use
<my_addr>,<my_port>,<remote_host> instead (Windows tracks ports only, but
everything else seems to get it right).

Of course, big routers are still expensive, and the other issues are quite
real.

~~~
bryanlarsen
That works for already established connections, but how does that work for new
connections from unknown remote hosts?

~~~
bensummers
You create the mapping when the connection is opened. Remember you only have
to deal with outgoing connections from hosts behind the NAT device.

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michaelbuckbee
I'm a developer, tech support for my extended family, and admin for a bunch of
web stack boxes. Is there a guide on what I (or everyone else) should be doing
to mitigate this? Or are the steps that need to be / can be taken immediately
only at the ISP level?

From the comments on the article it seemed like there was even still some
disagreement on quite what to do.

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dualboot
Easy solution : Allow the pirates to run wild on IPv6. Everyone else will
follow.

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HyprMusic
Can't we just claim back some of Egypt's IP addresses?

