5 ms·

>we still have around nine million recovered IPv4 addresses in our available pool. Under current policy and growth rates, we expect these to last a further two

by nsbq71 8y ago

>we still have around nine million recovered IPv4 addresses in our available pool. Under current policy and growth rates, we expect these to last a further two years. And by then they will have recovered even more. The end of IPv4 is a lie, and how bad IPv6 is and the lack of good transitioning systems doesn't help.

space_fountain 8y ago
We do have more and more people in the world. Things like NATing can help get around it to some extent, but at the end of the day there aren't enough addresses to give every human alive today even one IP address. That doesn't strike me as a problem that can be solved by buybacks.
- beobab 8y ago
  Trouble is that NAT solved a huge chunk of the problem. The current setup is not quite painful enough for people to want to fix it. The good is the enemy of the great, as it were.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    AKA "worse is better", biting us in the arse once again.
  - pdkl95 8y ago
    > not quite painful enough NAT was (and is) destructive and painful that some of us gave up writing network software in the late-90s/early-00s. I personally abandoned several network-focused projects in the early 2000s. The current status quo only seems "not quite painful enough" if you accept that most people cannot use true network software, limited to client-server architecture where party lines[1] communicate with each other only with the permission of central privileged imprimatur[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_%28telephony%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_%28telephony%29 [2] https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
    - PeterisP 8y ago
      "if you accept..." I mean, isn't that a very reasonable assumption? Do you really disagree with the notion that more than half of global population don't care at all about the ability to "use true network software", wouldn't use it if they could, and, as long as they're not restricted too much, knowingly avoid solutions with more freedom and actually prefer centralized solutions as long as they're even just a bit more convenient? Heck, if we don't listen at what people are claiming and look at their actions, then even in the techie crowd the majority aren't ready to sacrifice minor conveniences to choose decentralized models over a client-server run and entirely controlled by someone else.
  - ozim 8y ago
    Also I do not need to have directly accesible stuff on my home network. I can use dropbox or buy cheap VPS if I want to keep my data in sync. One is security, NAT is nice for that a lot smaller attack surface. Second keeping your stuff always running at home is unreliable and annoying. Would be nice if I would not have to pay for VPS but $5 a month cheapest linode is more than enough for my hobby projects.
    - z3t4 8y ago
      ipv6 solve the problem of one ip per device, with ipv6 you can have both local and public IP's on the same interface! Then your app's and services can choose whether they like to listen on local or public IP's. Without NAT you can do so much more stuff, like peer-to-peer (p2p) networking. Yes, you can do p2p with ipv4 behind NAT but it's super complicated and brittle. Also bypassing the NAT is complicated, you have to fiddle with the router settings, and often you have to call your ISP to give you a public IP. This makes it hard or impossible to sell "Internet of things" (IoT) devices to regular people as you can't just plug them in. Networks today are very good with high bandwidth and low latency, which enables some interesting use cases, for example virtual reality (VR) where you just have a thin client plugged in to the network and then have all the compute power located in a data-center a few miles away, with sub ms latency. Another usecase is apps with service like functionality, like decentralized Facebook, and chat messengers.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
      > Also I do not need to have directly accesible stuff on my home network. I can use dropbox or buy cheap VPS if I want to keep my data in sync. You also can walk everywhere instead of using machines to move around ... but why would you? > One is security, NAT is nice for that a lot smaller attack surface. No, it doesn't. It's a common myth, but NAT does not provide any security, it only hides insecurity. > Second keeping your stuff always running at home is unreliable and annoying. Complete non-sequitur?
      - ozim 8y ago
        Do you have redundant power supply at home, redundant internet connection? Keeping your own server up and running at home is unreliable and annoying. Having animals, kids, makes it even more difficult. If I would have to rely on it beeing up while I am abroad, I would rather pay for VPS. Hiding insecurity is perfectly valid. It is making attack surface smaller. I do not get pings of death, constant scanning, login attempts all the time on my local machine which is always behind NAT. Every server that has public IP gets scanned or tried out with vulnerabilities. I can connect totally new PC to router with NAT and not be owned in matters of minutes by some botnet. My router might be exposed but it is something I know. All machines behind router are perfectly fine for remote vulnerabilities.
  - takeda 8y ago
    Interrent would be very different (better) today if not for NAT. NAT restricts what is possible to do over network for example we only use TCP and UDP protocols, because those protocols are supported by most devices. Similarly we have very minimal number of peer to peer applications. P2P currently is mostly popular with piracy, but it could be beneficial for other uses. NAT + asymmetric speeds (which started because of DSL, but ISPs decided to keep things that way even though it is no longer necessary) are responsible that's why we haven't a lot of services that are centralized. IPv6 has chance to fix this and I am so glad NAT wasn't included in its design.
  - jjrh 8y ago
    > Trouble is that NAT solved a huge chunk of the problem. Well it solved the roof collapsing, but the problem is it makes innovation difficult and straight up impossible in some cases.
  - gsich 8y ago
    NAT is the problem. If you are behind a CGNAT, then you effectively can't use the Internet properly.
pgeorgi 8y ago
That's approximately a /17 worth of IPv4 addreses, recovered over multiple years going through all the low hanging fruit (eg the original /8 networks). 9 million addresses for 2 years is a burn rate of ~375k/month. Another 2 million newly obtained addresses in the next 2 years will last 6 more months. At some point IPv6 will become more economical.
- tialaramex 8y ago
  It's already more economical, it's just not surfaced very well economically. People hide the price of IPv4. One of the IPv6 ISPs did a talk about this, they realised that rather than hiding this cost they could surface it and then magically instead of "Try to persuade technical people to choose IPv6" the situation is "Make technical people explain to their finance department why they're spending the extra money" and what do you know, "Learn IPv6" is way more popular than "Argue with accountants".
freeone3000 8y ago
What's wrong with IPv6? The only complaints I've seen are "the numbers are bigger", as if that's not the point, and that makes them harder to remember.
- chrisper 8y ago
  My "main issue" with it is that if people are used to being behind NAT, they now have to be a bit more careful about securing their computers (firewall etc.) because every computer now is publicly accessible. Most routers do not even seem to have an IPv6 firewall.
  - nsbq71 8y ago
    Also some implementations (including Windows) [0] expose the MAC address of your device to the Internet, creating a huge privacy problem. IPv6 is a mess. [0] https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/57925467-2b8d-4c2d-b1f2-b0402581a30e/how-does-one-get-the-system-to-actually-use-the-ipv6-temporary-addresses?forum=win10itpronetworking https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/57...
  - arca_vorago 8y ago
    One of these days yall are going to see it my way... in which I think ipv6nat is important to use despite everything you hear about ipv6nat saying it should never be used, usually by people theorycrafting instead of being responsible for actual systems. (Cue the "but nat was never very secure" etc comments.)
  - api 8y ago
    Ultimately we do need to secure our endpoint devices. They need to be secure by default. NAT and firewalls let us get away with insecure broken OSes and services for a while, but not forever, and they create the "soft underbelly problem" where once someone manages to hop your firewall everything is vulnerable.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
    NAT does not provide access protection. NAT only hides the lack of access protection when it isn't there. A stateful firewall provides access protection, and that works with both IPv4 and IPv6.
markonen 8y ago
IP addresses accumulate reputations as well as background noise traffic bound for them. While "plenty" of these recovered addresses exist, there is something to be said for being able to get allocations of unused addresses.
- cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
  If the address is used you must refuse.

by nsbq71 8y ago

space_fountain 8y ago

We do have more and more people in the world. Things like NATing can help get around it to some extent, but at the end of the day there aren't enough addresses to give every human alive today even one IP address. That doesn't strike me as a problem that can be solved by buybacks.

beobab 8y ago
Trouble is that NAT solved a huge chunk of the problem. The current setup is not quite painful enough for people to want to fix it. The good is the enemy of the great, as it were.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  AKA "worse is better", biting us in the arse once again.
- pdkl95 8y ago
  > not quite painful enough NAT was (and is) destructive and painful that some of us gave up writing network software in the late-90s/early-00s. I personally abandoned several network-focused projects in the early 2000s. The current status quo only seems "not quite painful enough" if you accept that most people cannot use true network software, limited to client-server architecture where party lines[1] communicate with each other only with the permission of central privileged imprimatur[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_%28telephony%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_line_%28telephony%29 [2] https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    "if you accept..." I mean, isn't that a very reasonable assumption? Do you really disagree with the notion that more than half of global population don't care at all about the ability to "use true network software", wouldn't use it if they could, and, as long as they're not restricted too much, knowingly avoid solutions with more freedom and actually prefer centralized solutions as long as they're even just a bit more convenient? Heck, if we don't listen at what people are claiming and look at their actions, then even in the techie crowd the majority aren't ready to sacrifice minor conveniences to choose decentralized models over a client-server run and entirely controlled by someone else.
- ozim 8y ago
  Also I do not need to have directly accesible stuff on my home network. I can use dropbox or buy cheap VPS if I want to keep my data in sync. One is security, NAT is nice for that a lot smaller attack surface. Second keeping your stuff always running at home is unreliable and annoying. Would be nice if I would not have to pay for VPS but $5 a month cheapest linode is more than enough for my hobby projects.
  - z3t4 8y ago
    ipv6 solve the problem of one ip per device, with ipv6 you can have both local and public IP's on the same interface! Then your app's and services can choose whether they like to listen on local or public IP's. Without NAT you can do so much more stuff, like peer-to-peer (p2p) networking. Yes, you can do p2p with ipv4 behind NAT but it's super complicated and brittle. Also bypassing the NAT is complicated, you have to fiddle with the router settings, and often you have to call your ISP to give you a public IP. This makes it hard or impossible to sell "Internet of things" (IoT) devices to regular people as you can't just plug them in. Networks today are very good with high bandwidth and low latency, which enables some interesting use cases, for example virtual reality (VR) where you just have a thin client plugged in to the network and then have all the compute power located in a data-center a few miles away, with sub ms latency. Another usecase is apps with service like functionality, like decentralized Facebook, and chat messengers.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
    > Also I do not need to have directly accesible stuff on my home network. I can use dropbox or buy cheap VPS if I want to keep my data in sync. You also can walk everywhere instead of using machines to move around ... but why would you? > One is security, NAT is nice for that a lot smaller attack surface. No, it doesn't. It's a common myth, but NAT does not provide any security, it only hides insecurity. > Second keeping your stuff always running at home is unreliable and annoying. Complete non-sequitur?
    - ozim 8y ago
      Do you have redundant power supply at home, redundant internet connection? Keeping your own server up and running at home is unreliable and annoying. Having animals, kids, makes it even more difficult. If I would have to rely on it beeing up while I am abroad, I would rather pay for VPS. Hiding insecurity is perfectly valid. It is making attack surface smaller. I do not get pings of death, constant scanning, login attempts all the time on my local machine which is always behind NAT. Every server that has public IP gets scanned or tried out with vulnerabilities. I can connect totally new PC to router with NAT and not be owned in matters of minutes by some botnet. My router might be exposed but it is something I know. All machines behind router are perfectly fine for remote vulnerabilities.
- takeda 8y ago
  Interrent would be very different (better) today if not for NAT. NAT restricts what is possible to do over network for example we only use TCP and UDP protocols, because those protocols are supported by most devices. Similarly we have very minimal number of peer to peer applications. P2P currently is mostly popular with piracy, but it could be beneficial for other uses. NAT + asymmetric speeds (which started because of DSL, but ISPs decided to keep things that way even though it is no longer necessary) are responsible that's why we haven't a lot of services that are centralized. IPv6 has chance to fix this and I am so glad NAT wasn't included in its design.
- jjrh 8y ago
  > Trouble is that NAT solved a huge chunk of the problem. Well it solved the roof collapsing, but the problem is it makes innovation difficult and straight up impossible in some cases.
- gsich 8y ago
  NAT is the problem. If you are behind a CGNAT, then you effectively can't use the Internet properly.

pgeorgi 8y ago

That's approximately a /17 worth of IPv4 addreses, recovered over multiple years going through all the low hanging fruit (eg the original /8 networks). 9 million addresses for 2 years is a burn rate of ~375k/month. Another 2 million newly obtained addresses in the next 2 years will last 6 more months. At some point IPv6 will become more economical.

tialaramex 8y ago
It's already more economical, it's just not surfaced very well economically. People hide the price of IPv4. One of the IPv6 ISPs did a talk about this, they realised that rather than hiding this cost they could surface it and then magically instead of "Try to persuade technical people to choose IPv6" the situation is "Make technical people explain to their finance department why they're spending the extra money" and what do you know, "Learn IPv6" is way more popular than "Argue with accountants".

freeone3000 8y ago

What's wrong with IPv6? The only complaints I've seen are "the numbers are bigger", as if that's not the point, and that makes them harder to remember.

chrisper 8y ago
My "main issue" with it is that if people are used to being behind NAT, they now have to be a bit more careful about securing their computers (firewall etc.) because every computer now is publicly accessible. Most routers do not even seem to have an IPv6 firewall.
- nsbq71 8y ago
  Also some implementations (including Windows) [0] expose the MAC address of your device to the Internet, creating a huge privacy problem. IPv6 is a mess. [0] https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/57925467-2b8d-4c2d-b1f2-b0402581a30e/how-does-one-get-the-system-to-actually-use-the-ipv6-temporary-addresses?forum=win10itpronetworking https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/57...
- arca_vorago 8y ago
  One of these days yall are going to see it my way... in which I think ipv6nat is important to use despite everything you hear about ipv6nat saying it should never be used, usually by people theorycrafting instead of being responsible for actual systems. (Cue the "but nat was never very secure" etc comments.)
- api 8y ago
  Ultimately we do need to secure our endpoint devices. They need to be secure by default. NAT and firewalls let us get away with insecure broken OSes and services for a while, but not forever, and they create the "soft underbelly problem" where once someone manages to hop your firewall everything is vulnerable.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
  NAT does not provide access protection. NAT only hides the lack of access protection when it isn't there. A stateful firewall provides access protection, and that works with both IPv4 and IPv6.

markonen 8y ago

IP addresses accumulate reputations as well as background noise traffic bound for them. While "plenty" of these recovered addresses exist, there is something to be said for being able to get allocations of unused addresses.

cuckcuckspruce 8y ago
If the address is used you must refuse.