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IPv4's Last Day: What Will Happen When There Is Only IPv6?
Enterprise Networking Planet ^ | 23 April 2010 | Sean Michael Kerner

Posted on 04/26/2010 10:57:26 AM PDT by ShadowAce

How will we know when IPv4 address space is all used up? And what will happen when that day comes?

The modern Internet has been built using IPv4 (define), which provides for 4.3 billion address, a supply that could run dry within the next two years. Organizations that allocate IP address space like the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) have attempted to forecast when IPv4 address space will be gone, but it's not an exact science, and there is no precise date to mark on a calendar.

At the ARIN XXV policy meetings held here this week, ARIN CIO Richard Jimmerson explained how the organization expects to know when the final IPv4 address is gone.

"We will run out of IPv4 address space and the real difficult part is that there is no flag date. It's a real moving date based on demand and the amount of address space we can reclaim from organizations," Jimmerson told InternetNews.com. "If things continue they way they have, ARIN will for the very first time, sometime between the middle and end of next year, receive a request for IPv4 address space that is justified and meets the policy. However, ARIN won't have the address space. So we'll have to say no for the very first time."

Saying no to an IPv4 request will be shocking to some organizations, which is why ARIN is trying to get the word out now on the importance of moving to IPv6, Jimmerson said. The IPv6 (define) address space, the next generation of IP addressing, provides 340 trillion trillion trillion (34 x 10 to the 38th power) Internet addresses.

The first time that ARIN declines an IPv4 address request won't necessarily be the date that IPv4 is completely exhausted.

"It will be a different date for different sizes and types of organizations," Jimmerson said. "For instance there are some large national organizations that make address space requests of big blocks. They'll be the first ones to come in and we'll have to tell them we don't have as much as they want and they'll have to take a smaller block. That will be the first indication."

For other organizations requesting smaller blocks of a few thousand addresses, IPv4 may be available for a longer period of time. But eventually, ARIN will reach the point when it won't be able to fulfill even small requests, Jimmerson said

To date, the smallest address size allocation ARIN has issued is what is referred to as a /22 address block, which provides 1,024 IP addresses. Jimmerson noted that in the future, ARIN may well begin to offer smaller sized address blocks in the /24 range, which provide 256 IPv4 addresses.

Once the final IPv4 address space that ARIN has available is allocated, there will still be some extra IPv4 addresses that the organization will hold in reserve.

"We have some special addresses that we'll hold onto, according to the policy that has been set," Jimmerson said.

He explained that members of the policy community recognized a few years back that IPv4 address space was running out. They also recognized that there would soon be some organizations that would need to deploy new networks and services on IPv6 without the benefit of IPv4. As a result, the decision was made to retain some IPv4 address space so that new networks could put up their IPv4 DNS (define) and run protocol-translation services.

"So the community set up a policy where we reserve a /10 of IPv4 address space from our final /8 address allocation," Jimmerson said.

A /8 block contains 16,777,214 addresses. The /10 contains 4 million addresses.

"So in the future when we do run out of IPv4 we still have that /10 set aside for organizations that just need a little bit for protocol translation or DNS," Jimmerson said.

ARIN manages IP address space allocations for the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean region. ARIN is one of five global Regional Internet Registry (RIR) organizations that in turn receive their IP allocations from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). The other four RIRs are the RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) for Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) for Asia and the Pacific region, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) for Latin America and the African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) for Africa.

At this point, Jimmerson said that ARIN will still be making IPv4 address space available as long as the supply from IANA holds out.

"There is a global policy that states when the IANA free pool of IPv4 addresses gets down to five /8s remaining they will automatically take and give one of the remaining /8s to each of the five RIRs," Jimmerson said.

According to Jimmerson, there are now 20 /8s remaining in the IANA pool, which makes it likely that ARIN will get more IPv4 address space. As IPv4 address space nears exhaustion, ARIN has seen the demand slacken.

"In the ARIN region demand for IPv4 may have leveled off and slowed down in the last few years," Jimmerson said. "We have a pretty saturated market with IPv4 address space in North America."

Other areas of the world are still seeing high demand for IPv4 address space. In particular, the Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions are experiencing historically high levels of IPv4 address demand, Jimmerson said.

"For only the second time ever, LACNIC, which services all of South and Central America, issued more IPv4 address space in the first quarter of 2010 than ARIN did," he said. "I don't think it has anything to do with IPv4 depletion -- it's just that the markets are picking up down there."


TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: ipv4; ipv6
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1 posted on 04/26/2010 10:57:26 AM PDT by ShadowAce
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To: rdb3; Calvinist_Dark_Lord; GodGunsandGuts; CyberCowboy777; Salo; Bobsat; JosephW; ...

2 posted on 04/26/2010 10:57:37 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce

IPv6 is a mind-bending concatenation of Hex.

DOD continues to delay it’s full deployment.

Argh


3 posted on 04/26/2010 10:59:57 AM PDT by roaddog727 (It's the Constitution, Stupid!)
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To: ShadowAce

The machines will become self aware, and decide our fate in a nanosecond...


4 posted on 04/26/2010 11:00:33 AM PDT by Haiku Guy (Gov. Chris Christie (R) won the NJ-6 held by Rep. Frank Pallone (D) by a 15.5% margin!)
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To: ShadowAce

OH NO!!! IT’S WORSE THAN Y2K!!!!

hh


5 posted on 04/26/2010 11:01:57 AM PDT by hoosier hick (Note to RINOs: We need a choice, not an echo....Barry Goldwater)
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To: ShadowAce

Why didn’t they just start out with IPv6?


6 posted on 04/26/2010 11:03:45 AM PDT by ReneeLynn (Socialism is SO yesterday. Fascism, it*s the new black. Mmm Mmm Mmm.)
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To: ShadowAce

Basically IPv4 addresses run out when they run out ... LOL ... that’s what they’re saying.

They could have a better strategy, like assigning (i.e., “fixing”) a time when no one would be given IPv4 addresses (make it a “date certain”) — and then keeping whatever number of IPv4 addresses they had, in reserve for “whatever” in the future.


7 posted on 04/26/2010 11:05:09 AM PDT by Star Traveler (Remember to keep the Messiah of Israel in the One-World Government that we look forward to coming)
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To: ReneeLynn
They couldn't foresee the need at the time (60's/70's).

24 bits is a lot of addresses, even though whole blocks are reserved for specific uses.

PCs were not around at the time, and private ownership of computers was also in the future.

8 posted on 04/26/2010 11:06:05 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce

Let me be the first to say that Obama will declare he inherited this predicament...


9 posted on 04/26/2010 11:06:37 AM PDT by COBOL2Java (Big government more or less guarantees rule by creeps and misfits.)
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To: ShadowAce
The Powers That Be need to exercise something like Eminent Domain over IPv4. There are far too many holders of larger address space than their internet presence will ever justify.

My previous employer had legal, routable addresses for every device on our network for years. A lot of network admins must hold them for prestige or sheer cluelessness.

IPv4 + assigning network blocks through ISPs only + NAT and the world is fine. Take all the rest of the unused/misused address space and there is no problem.

10 posted on 04/26/2010 11:07:01 AM PDT by TChris ("Hello", the politician lied.)
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To: ShadowAce
PCs were not around at the time, and private ownership of computers was also in the future.

I had a personal computer in the 70's.

11 posted on 04/26/2010 11:07:35 AM PDT by ColdWater ("The theory of evolution really has no bearing on what I'm trying to accomplish with FR anyway. ")
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To: ColdWater

On the DARPA net?


12 posted on 04/26/2010 11:09:02 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: COBOL2Java

Of course. After all, it’s Bush’s fault.


13 posted on 04/26/2010 11:09:08 AM PDT by Ingtar (Obama's favorite carol: Hark The Herald Angels Sing About Me)
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To: TChris
IPv4 + assigning network blocks through ISPs only + NAT and the world is fine.

Agreed. Think it would happen, though?

14 posted on 04/26/2010 11:09:46 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: ShadowAce
Agreed. Think it would happen, though?

It seems to be the way they do it now, but legacy network assignments are the problem. The RF spectrum is the same way: HUGE swaths of bandwidth are owned by the government or the railroads, due to decades-old deals.

They are nearly all unused, but off-limits to everyone else.

I would support a one-time audit of class A licensees for determining their actual internet-facing node count and reassigning address space accordingly. Millions of unused addresses would be freed up.

15 posted on 04/26/2010 11:13:57 AM PDT by TChris ("Hello", the politician lied.)
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To: ShadowAce
Here is what a valid IPv6 address looks like in a browser session....

http://[2002:ac1a:143:0:2e0:dbff:dead:5b18]/

Yes, brackets are needed. Pretty nasty eh?

16 posted on 04/26/2010 11:14:19 AM PDT by lormand (Paulhroids - the hemmorhoids of American Politics)
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To: Ingtar

No, it is Al Gore’s fault - he invented the Internet, you know.


17 posted on 04/26/2010 11:15:24 AM PDT by TexasRepublic (Socialism is the gospel of envy and the religion of thieves)
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To: ShadowAce; ColdWater

Some Of The Dates For 70'S Computer Innovations


18 posted on 04/26/2010 11:15:32 AM PDT by Star Traveler (Remember to keep the Messiah of Israel in the One-World Government that we look forward to coming)
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To: lormand; dead
http://[2002:ac1a:143:0:2e0:dbff:dead:5b18]/

You're supposed to ping a Freeper before referencing them. ;)

19 posted on 04/26/2010 11:15:34 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: roaddog727

DoD is waiting until they JITC certify all of their stuff first, then everyone else we be able to use it.


20 posted on 04/26/2010 11:15:50 AM PDT by lormand (Paulhroids - the hemmorhoids of American Politics)
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