4 ms·

A few years ago I remember hearing all about the IPv4 crisis and how we were going to run out of addresses very soon. How did we misjudge this so badly? It seem

A few years ago I remember hearing all about the IPv4 crisis and how we were going to run out of addresses very soon. How did we misjudge this so badly? It seems like it should be some pretty simple mathematics to figure out when exhaustion would occur?

bsder 9y ago
Everybody used the band-aid known as NAT and broke everything in the universe in order to not deploy IPv6 for a couple of years. Now, we're adopting IPv6 in earnest, but everybody is whining that they want to hang onto NAT. So, before IPv6 got deployed, everybody shot themselves in the left foot by deploying NAT. And, now that IPv6 is deployed, they continue shooting themselves in the right foot by hanging onto NAT.
- danudey 9y ago
  Not just NAT, but CGNAT, which allows ISPs to oversubscribe your IP address for you. https://www.a10networks.com/resources/glossary/carrier-grade-network-address-translation https://www.a10networks.com/resources/glossary/carrier-grade...
ianburrell 9y ago
We have already run out of IPv4 addresses. IANA allocated all blocks in 2011, Asia ran out in 2011, Europe 2012, Latin America 2014, and North America in 2015. The address exhaustion predictions were pretty accurate.
cptskippy 9y ago
How do you figure things were misjudged? There's a fixed pool of IP Addresses that can be allocated. When that allocation pool runs out, no more can be allocated. Allocation occurs in blocks at a very high level and then at subsequent levels more sub block allocation happens. The INAN ran out of IPs to hand out. That doesn't mean that all of the IPs have been assigned to physical devices attached to the internet. For example the US Government Agencies have tons of IPs they aren't using but that had been previously allocated to them decades ago and can't be taken back.
jzl 9y ago
There was no misjudgement. IPv4 addresses are still running out. Adoption of IPv6 has helped the issue. Some parts of the world are aggressively going IPv6 only. IPv6 adoption has seen a massive uptick in the last year. Check the google graphs. Also some under-utilized IPv4 address blocks have been recently re-claimed. MIT recently sold off half of its class A to Amazon: https://www.networkworld.com/article/3191503/internet/mit-selling-8-million-coveted-ipv4-addresses-amazon-a-buyer.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/3191503/internet/mit-se...
- snuxoll 9y ago
  > MIT recently sold off half of its class A to Amazon: And garbage like this is why I cannot wait for the IPv6-only future, CIDR let us stall IPv4 address exhaustion but it has caused severe bloating in routing tables. Considering an IPv6 route at the internet level is capped at 64-bits (the max length of a proper network prefix, you can technically do smaller ones but WHY, and nobody will take your BGP advertisement for it either) I expect even with a 2X increase in size occupied by each individual route the size of a full BGP table is going to be dramatically smaller.
umanwizard 9y ago
The math was right; we are out.

bsder 9y ago

Everybody used the band-aid known as NAT and broke everything in the universe in order to not deploy IPv6 for a couple of years. Now, we're adopting IPv6 in earnest, but everybody is whining that they want to hang onto NAT. So, before IPv6 got deployed, everybody shot themselves in the left foot by deploying NAT. And, now that IPv6 is deployed, they continue shooting themselves in the right foot by hanging onto NAT.

danudey 9y ago
Not just NAT, but CGNAT, which allows ISPs to oversubscribe your IP address for you. https://www.a10networks.com/resources/glossary/carrier-grade-network-address-translation https://www.a10networks.com/resources/glossary/carrier-grade...

ianburrell 9y ago

We have already run out of IPv4 addresses. IANA allocated all blocks in 2011, Asia ran out in 2011, Europe 2012, Latin America 2014, and North America in 2015. The address exhaustion predictions were pretty accurate.

cptskippy 9y ago

How do you figure things were misjudged? There's a fixed pool of IP Addresses that can be allocated. When that allocation pool runs out, no more can be allocated. Allocation occurs in blocks at a very high level and then at subsequent levels more sub block allocation happens. The INAN ran out of IPs to hand out. That doesn't mean that all of the IPs have been assigned to physical devices attached to the internet. For example the US Government Agencies have tons of IPs they aren't using but that had been previously allocated to them decades ago and can't be taken back.

jzl 9y ago

There was no misjudgement. IPv4 addresses are still running out. Adoption of IPv6 has helped the issue. Some parts of the world are aggressively going IPv6 only. IPv6 adoption has seen a massive uptick in the last year. Check the google graphs. Also some under-utilized IPv4 address blocks have been recently re-claimed. MIT recently sold off half of its class A to Amazon: https://www.networkworld.com/article/3191503/internet/mit-selling-8-million-coveted-ipv4-addresses-amazon-a-buyer.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/3191503/internet/mit-se...

snuxoll 9y ago
> MIT recently sold off half of its class A to Amazon: And garbage like this is why I cannot wait for the IPv6-only future, CIDR let us stall IPv4 address exhaustion but it has caused severe bloating in routing tables. Considering an IPv6 route at the internet level is capped at 64-bits (the max length of a proper network prefix, you can technically do smaller ones but WHY, and nobody will take your BGP advertisement for it either) I expect even with a 2X increase in size occupied by each individual route the size of a full BGP table is going to be dramatically smaller.

umanwizard 9y ago

The math was right; we are out.