

IPv6 is here - devicenull
http://www.apnic.net/publications/news/2011/delegation

======
tptacek
IPv6 is in no sense here. The fiat allocators can exhaust their address space
completely and the Internet will continue to function indefinitely; it will
simply become more expensive (first marginally, and then significantly) to
hold a static address.

There are deep problems with universal deployment of IPv6 far beyond simply
getting people to throw a switch; the number of popular software packages that
will malfunction when addresses cease being representable in scalar integers
is large.

~~~
ams6110
The natural solution will be that IPv4 addresses will start getting more and
more expensive as they become scarce. At some point, switching to IPv6 will be
the cheaper option, and then the switch will happen.

~~~
andyv
But if you only buy an ipv6 address, the people who are only on ipv4 can't get
to you. By itself, the ipv6 address is nearly worthless. The only people who
have them now are people who also have an ipv4 address. ipv4 isn't going away
any time soon...

~~~
tomjen3
Take any prefix thats currently unallocated and make it so that you slap that
in front on any ipv4 address.

Volia now everybody has an ipv6 address.

~~~
pyre
Currently IPv4 addresses fix nicely (exactly) into a 32-bit integer. How do
you propose that software storing addresses as such will be able to use a
larger address without an update? (Not to mention all of the other reasons,
like the different packet format to accommodate the larger address space among
other things)

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jedsmith
This needs a better headline, given the gravity of the announcement. IPv6 is
by no means _here_ , and really has nothing to do with this news item. To me,
"IPv6 is here" says absolutely nothing about the real news here - APNIC having
received two /8s (and one forthcoming), making them the recipient of three out
of seven of the remaining /8s.

The gravity of this announcement is that we are now in the Exhaustion Phase of
the ICANN policy on IPv4 depletion:
[http://www.icann.org/en/general/allocation-remaining-
ipv4-sp...](http://www.icann.org/en/general/allocation-remaining-
ipv4-space.htm)

If anything, it means we need to boogie on IPv6 now, but that's not new (and
is only tangentially related to the announcement).

~~~
dholowiski
Definetley, inaccurate headline. The problem is, this is a historic moment,
it's just extremely difficult to explain why. This is more lime the beginning
of the end. It's going to be long and drawn out.

~~~
devicenull
I won't really deny that. I can't really come up with a catchy title for what
actually happened today, but I feel it's pretty important.

~~~
jefe78
"The end is nigh...for IP4!" perhaps?

------
steadicat
Is nobody else afraid that instead of IPv6 we're now going to get more and
more layers of NAT?

Sure, for us geeks that's totally unthinkable... no servers, no P2P?!? But
most users, who are content with just web & email, will probably never notice
the difference.

ISPs will surely find it easier to turn NAT on than to switch to IPv6, and the
backlash might be close to nonexistent.

~~~
wmf
It's not clear that NAT is cheaper than IPv6; huge NAT boxes are pretty
expensive.

------
StavrosK
As I understand it, this is the last few IPv4 blocks being handed out. This
leads people to conclude that IPv6 is here? If anything, it seems to me that
it's "IPv4 is gone", and we need to take steps to ensure that that wasn't the
last thing we had.

------
wmf
IPv6 is _not_ here; that's the problem. This is a momentous announcement,
though.

~~~
count
IPv6 IS here, I believe you meant to say it's just not evenly distributed yet!

------
chair6
Here, yes, but not particularly wide-spread and slowly becoming more
necessary.

A little tool I built last week .. is your site IPv6 ready?
<http://ready.chair6.net>

~~~
kitchen
I like it. You should also add checks for ipv6 glue records. I advertise ipv6
dns servers but I do not yet have glue, so you still need to connect to my dns
servers over ipv4. According to your tool I just have to convince google to
add AAAA records to their MX targets and I'm set, but I'm not :)

~~~
chair6
Thanks for the suggestion.. I added a few more DNS-related checks. I think I
have the tests/logic right but please let me know if you spot any errors.

------
dholowiski
Ok, ipv6 is here. Or not. Anyway, when is Amazon going to support ipv6 on ec2?

~~~
rmoriz
While Amazon still has no native IPv6 you can at least use 6to4 for now to
evaluate/test, see my guide and script at:
[http://binarymentalist.com/post/2984855918/try-ipv6-on-
amazo...](http://binarymentalist.com/post/2984855918/try-ipv6-on-amazon-
ec2-using-6to4)

------
CrLf
Even after innumberable discussions about this subject, I still don't get why
people are so afraid of NAT.

The main concern seems to be about ISPs starting to NAT everybody and their
dog. Well, guess what, they just can't do that. For starters because their
users would get very angry when their torrents stop working, and would jump
ship for any other ISP that announces that it either doesn't do NAT or has
implemented IPv6.

There is still a huge amount of work that can be done to compress the usage of
v4 address space. Maybe not much that the RIRs or the ISPs can do, but as the
cost of owning a static IPv4 address goes up (and I believe that it will go
_way_ up), end users will start compressing their public services into fewer
addresses and giving back small subnets to their providers to reduce costs. I
mean, who the hell needs to have a mail server and a web server in two
different public addresses when they can just do port-forwarding over a single
address? (And since most servers are on DMZs with private addressing, they are
mostly doing it already, it's just a matter of renumbering.)

The case most likely to go NAT is also the most likely to go IPv6: mobile
devices. These are mostly behind NAT already, and going IPv6 would actually
reduce costs for ISPs. It would also put ISPs in the track for more extensive
IPv6, since the major problem now is that people have little knowledge of how
IPv6 works and ISPs are trying to avoid the pain. The issue is, of course,
that 99.9% of mobile devices don't support dual-stack and even in a pure v6
configuration don't actually work properly.

For this I predict that in 10 years the move to IPv6 will still be half-way.
Considering that we are so close to IPv4 depletion and there is virtually _no_
IPv6 to be seen, I'm being faily optimistic.

~~~
count
How will the cost of owning a v4 space go up? It's yours, the price is set,
and ARIN/IANA et al have not mentioned any intention of increasing price.

~~~
devicenull
For people that don't actually have their own allocation from a RIR, the price
will likely go up. It's a matter of supply and demand, their provider is going
to have a shrinking pool of IP addresses from which to assign new ones to
servers. It seems likely to me they will start charging additional fees for
more IP addresses.

------
rbranson
We are by no means out of IPv4 addresses. The next step is that all of the
entities who needlessly snapped up /8 space early on and sat on it for so long
will be selling it off. The list includes GE, Xerox, IBM, HP, Apple, MIT,
Ford, Halliburton, Prudential Insurance, Bell-Northern, Merck, Eli Lilly, the
DoD/military (who has 13), USPS, and CSC. Just half of this space is 234m IPv4
addresses.

~~~
bodyfour
Sigh... this idea has to get thrown out every time there's an IPv4-exhaustion
discussion. I guess I'll be the one to do the public service of debunking it
this time.

* You can assume that each of the /8s have plenty of infrastructure relying on them, meaning $millions in migration costs. Do you think that the holders will just give them up tomorrow, or do you think its more likely they'll sick some lawyers on the problem? So even if you CAN get them back it'll take years.

* For each /8 you successfully extract this way, you buy the world mere WEEKS of time.

IPv4 allocation isn't completely efficient -- we all know that. The real
problem, however, isn't efficiency. 2^32 is just too small of a number.

~~~
Luyt
Although the /8s have an entire infrastructure relying on their current
situation, it is not unthinkable that the economical advantage of making
subsets of their space available to third parties will become more attractive
than just letting it sit idle. It might even justify the migration costs. So
maybe we'll see parts of IBM, Apple and HP transform to IP/DNS providers.

Apart from that, it's not a question of having the /8s 'give back' IP adresses
-- it's about them monetizing their available IPv4 space, out of their own
volition.

Whether that relieves the IPv4 shortage for weeks or months doesn't really
matter. What matters is what value they can extract from it.

~~~
bodyfour
The "IPv4 marketplace" idea has serious issues of its own, though:

1\. it's ARIN (and, I think, other registrars) policy that you do not `own'
your assignments in any legal sense. So if you sell them you may be committing
fraud. If the deal goes bad it's not clear what the legal recourse would be.
This is just a flipside of the "take back the /8s" problem: it gives too much
for the lawyers to do.

They might even collide: suppose a large company with a /8 (say, Haliburton)
decides to open a IPv4 marketplace. In response, ARIN says "well its clear you
have more IP space than you need, so we're taking back your allocation
effective next month" Now who has the rights to those IPs: the people who paid
Haliburton for them, or those that got them in new assignments from ARIN?

2\. Just having an IPv4 address isn't useful if it isn't routable. To split up
a /8 into tiny salable bits means that all of the backbones need to update
their BGP route prefix filters.

If this were done under the auspices of ICANN this wouldn't be a big problem
at all: if ICANN says that the allocation policy for an address range has
changed then all of the big players will follow suit. (There can be a few
remaining routing issues for a new /8 on the periphery but they tend to get
sorted out fairly quickly)

Would a similar announcement from Halliburton have the same effect? Doubtful,
especially if it is done in opposition to ICANN's wishes. So probably any IPs
"bought" in this system won't actually be routable.

3\. Related: even if there was a healthy, 100% legal marketplace for IPv4
space it could only be practical if they were bought and sold in large chunks
exclusively. If everybody who wanted some space for their company had to buy
their own /28, the global BGP routing table would completely explode.

The only workable marketplace would be at the ISP level.

4\. The registries are all united in wanting IPv6 deployed. Having companies
making big profits selling their lucky IPv4 windfalls means that there would
be deep-pocketed people with a vested interest in stalling IPv6 even more...
after all if IPv6 were widely deployed the value of `their' IPv4 addresses
would plummet.

Now it is true that if the IPv4 situation becomes dire enough, some of these
players might decide to suddenly get into the hosting game and put more of
their IP space to use. For instance, Apple has a /8 and just built a HUGE
datacenter.. maybe they want to do their own version of EC2? The idea is a
little odd but maybe not unthinkable

------
pinko
If people are really interested in speeding IPv6 adoption, the fastest way
might be for government and/or industry to subsidize IPv6-only broadband for
consumers (via existing ISPs).

Imagine $1-5/month DSL to your home, price-locked for 3 years--except it's
IPv6-only. Lots of cost-conscious people would sign up or switch to save
$xx/month, even if it meant their Internet access was crippled for a while.

But it wouldn't be crippled for long, because with such an underserved user
base, the major services most people care about (Facebook, Google, etc.) would
very quickly start to cater to it (even if the demographics did skew low-
income), because it would be a green field and a big opportunity to build
longer-term user relationships to monetize down the road.

------
ErrantX
This might be a stupid idea, so feel free to roundly berate me, but...

Given that a switch to IPv6 has potential to cause widespread problems, and
that we might be facing such a switch before they are ironed out..

Can we not simply update IPv4 and add a new octet to the address space? So
_255_.255.255.255.255, then call everything distributed so far
000.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and make a start on the 001.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx address space.

I appreciate that we would need to update a lot of software to handle the new
octet, but I can't help feeling that would be much easier to do (with the
advantage of easier "failing gracefully" / backward support).

But networking ain't my thing :)

~~~
jwatzman
As I understand it, the problem for IPv6 is with existing routing hardware and
with testing. So if you're going to go through all the effort to add a new
octet (which requires changing the IP packet format to allow for the extra
space, for example), then you might as well go all the way to IPv6 and solve
the problem once and for all.

~~~
ErrantX
Ah, the IP packet format - hadn't considered that aspect, cheers. As you say -
wouldn't make sense.

~~~
pyre
Not just the IP packet format. Most software ends up storing IPv4 ip addresses
in a 32-bit integer (because it fits exactly). All of those pieces of software
would need to be updated to work with IPv4's 'new ocetet' as well. As the
other poster stated. If everything needs to be upgraded, then might as well do
it right the first time.

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benwerd
The final paragraph is somewhat ominous:

"APNIC reiterates that IPv6 is the only means available for the sustained
ongoing growth of the Internet, and urges all Members of the Internet industry
to move quickly towards its deployment."

In other words, as wmf has already said, IPv6 isn't here. But it needs to be,
and soon, otherwise the game is very rapidly going to be up.

------
Jem
I only have a basic understanding of IPv4 vs IPv6, so can someone explain to
me:

a) what impact will this have on me as Joe Public internet user?

b) what impact will this have on me as a web developer?

Or point me to suitable websites that explain in quick skimmable chunks...

~~~
count
a) Eventually (most likely next year or later), if you do not have IPv6
connectivity, there will be new content and sites added to the global internet
that you will have no way of accessing at all from your v4 connected computer.

a2) Alternatively, in a year or so, you get service from a brand new ISP that
has no v4 connectivity (so, you are v6 native), and you cannot access
_anything_ on the v4 Internet around the world (e.g. most things today).

b) Don't store IP addresses as 32bit integers, or as 15 character strings. Be
aware that geolocation services probably don't do well with v6 addresses. Make
sure your deployment platform has the infrastructure in place to serve both v4
and v6 customers (or at least v6 after a year or two) - AAAA dns records, etc.

~~~
e40
Why would a new ISP have no v4 connectivity? They'd be connected to someone,
and they would likely have v4 connectivity. Wouldn't they be able to have a
private network connection to them (10.x.x.x)?

~~~
count
You can't eBGP route private addresses. (well, you _can_ , but if you do, you
should be shot).

The new ISP would need it's own space to announce (it's not much of an ISP if
it's got no customers to give addresses too, so it needs addresses. It's also
not much of an ISP if it's only got one upstream, so it'll need PI (provider
independent) space, allocated to it from it's RIR (ARIN, RIPE, etc). And
that'll all be gone soon :)

------
AliCollins
So when does the entire internet fall apart then?! Millennium bug, anyone..??!

