Posted on 02/01/2011 9:40:20 AM PST by ShadowAce
Early this morning, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) announced that it had been allocated two /8 address blocks from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA ). Those two blocks, 39/8 and 106/8, were the last unallocated blocks in the IANA free pool of IPv4 address available to Regional Internet Registries (RIR). With the allocation, the final days of IPv4 have moved closer as the number of available addresses that can be allocated will dwindle.
"Please be aware, this will be the final allocation made by IANA under the current framework and will trigger the final distribution of five /8 blocks, one to each RIR under the agreed global policy for the allocation of the remaining IPv4 address space,” APNIC wrote on its website.
IANA has scheduled a press conference for Thursday morning to discuss the final allocation of the last five blocks of IPv4 space. The policy of distributing the final five equally among the RIRs is a long standing policy designed for the endgame of IPv4.
While the IANA free pool is now gone, that doesn't mean that IPv4 address space itself has been exhausted. The RIRs make requests from IANA for free, unallocated space which is then allocated by the RIRs to carriers and businesses. Each /8 allocation includes approximately 16 million addresses. In total, there could be 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses in use, were they all fully allocated.
APNIC expects to continue to make normal allocations of IPv4 address space to its constituents for the next three to six months. After that, it will grant only smaller blocks of address space that could extend the allocation another five years.
In the U.S., the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is the RIR responsible for address allocation. John Curran, CEO of ARIN, told InternetNews.com that as of January 1, 2011 (the date of the last number resource report), ARIN had the equivalent of 4.92 /8 blocks. Curran was not able to specify when ARIN will actually run out of IPv4 address space to allocate.
"We have no official forecast, and any estimate would change rapidly depending on requests received," Curran said. "Based on solely historical tendencies, 6 to 9 months from final IANA allocation till ARIN exhaustion would not be an unreasonable expectation."
With freely available, unallocated IPv4 addresses almost gone, the move to the next generation IPv6 addressing system which provides significantly more address space than IPv4 must begin in earnest. IPv6 has a 128 bit addressing system that can provide 340 trillion trillion trillion (34 x 10 to the 38th power) Internet addresses.
To date, IPv6 adoption has been slow, though the RIRs have been advocating for its adoption.
"The RIRs have been working with network operators at the local, regional, and global level for more than a decade to offer training and advice on IPv6 adoption and ensure that everyone is prepared for the exhaustion of IPv4," Axel Pawlik, managing director of RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens), the RIR for Europe told InternetNews.com. "Post IPv4 depletion, RIPE will continue to distribute Internet number resources, including IPv6 addresses."
Pawlik added that the transition to IPv6 from IPv4 represents an opportunity for even more innovative applications without the fear of running out of essential Internet IP addresses.
Though IPv4 is now nearly exhausted, the move to IPv4 will take time. The Internet Society has scheduled World IPv6 day for June to test the addressing system on major websites including Google and Facebook, but there is still work to be done. The immediate future is not a move away from IPv4, but rather a move to include IPv6.
"Internet users need to realize that the Internet will be in transition over several years, with both IPv4 and IPv6 running in parallel," ARIN's Curran said. "Organizations need to IPv6 enable their Web site, so that both existing IPv4 and new IPv6-connected Internet users can directly access it."
They need to add more tubes to the series!
Bad news for current Mozilla users.
IT budgets are going to rise on this news!
Those with existing networks may have more problems with equipment, but what we are doing is all new, and I've spec'ed the correct equipment. I'm just glad I'm no longer maintaining a (soon-to-be) legacy network.
/johnny
Why? Mozilla implemented IPv6 in 2000.
Would someone please logoff, I need to check my email!
Good cover for surfing pron.
Um, I need to, check my email too! In private!
LOL!
All the way back in 1991, when I first started using the internet, I was astonished that there were so few IP addresses. I honestly don’t understand how the heck anyone engaged in planning for the future could, at that time, allocate fewer digits than the number of people in the world. By 1997, when I was working in a single lab where there were on the order of 3 computers for every employee, all networked together, I realized with certainty the situation had to be addressed rather soon. About that time, even our utility providers had assigned unique IPs to various equipment that was connected to the home office.
I am somewhat concerned that IPv6 (which I think is 2^16, ~65,000, more addresses than current) will prove insufficient, and that instead we should be going to an IPv8 configuration instead.
Oops -—
Read and digest article!
The first thing to do with any new install of Firefox is to about:config and disable IPv6.
It's a problem that's most noticeable in Linux.
My assumption is that they're addressing it in 4 because I never disabled IPv6 in my builds of that, and they're running as well as when it's disabled in previous versions.
There is an easy way to encouage businesses to give up addresses that they are sitting on. Start charging $.01 per address annually. I suspect that many firms that are sitting on litterally millions of addresses will start to rethink that policy and turn more address space back.
Further, if IPv6 is left as free, then there will be new drive to make the move and convert. This will in turn free up more address space.
Another move would be to make the local host address 255.0.0.1 instead of 127.0.0.0. Likewise the local network would be 255.0.0.2 - 255.255.254.0 - .255
It’s not that bad. There are public and private IPs. Many public IPs are used on corporate or other managed networks. A gateway plus the use of Network Address Translation (NAT) can convert many of the public IPs to private IPs. This frees up a substantial percentage of the public IPs. Many intranets already do this when they’re running out of their public IPs.
Chances are if you’re on a cable modem you’re NAT-ed to private IP space.
Most mid-level network engineers know how to do implement the conversion.
Turns out that the original addresses were for the ARPA development, and no-one knew that the internet was coming, or would be world-wide.
So the orginal addressing space was plenty for the military testing that was contemplated.
/johnny
The company I work for, we use a 10.x.x.x subnet which is local. My previous company, we used actual real IP numbers but they were not accessible from the outside but they could go to a local IP like 10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x and forgot the other one. I know companies like HP have a block where it is Class A -> 4.x.x.x. Those who still have Class A’s should be encouraged to give them up.
Are you serious? When IP was developed, in the 60’s, there was ‘plenty to go around’. No one envisioned half the planet carrying phones that have distinct IP addresses.
Of course, my phone doesn’t need a publicly routed IP address - it needs a PRIVATE address on my carriers network, that goes through a NAT pool to reach whatever site I want/need.
Additionally, IPv6 allows for a number (even larger than the US national debt!) that is rather unimaginable. It’s roughly 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 IP addresses. Divide that by 6,500,000,000, and you’ve got 5,235,113,337,245,200,000,000 per PERSON. I don’t have that many devices that are IP capable, and I work as a network architect at a university. IPv6 will be sufficient (and then some).
IPv6 is 2^128. It’s a truly astounding number of addresses.
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