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IPv4 Waiting List
- nerdponx 5y agoIt looks like there was a big increase in the size of the waiting list in November. Is this bigger than any past increase?
- Maxburn 5y agoIt would certainly be nice if the chart scrolled and went back further.
- zauguin 5y agoThe graph starts in November 2019 because that is when the waitlist system was introduced. There's not point in going back further because further back the waitlist didn't exist.
- nerdponx 5y agoSo this really big increase in November 2022 is a brand new phenomenon, and the waiting list has been sitting at 0 for the entire time since the 2019 increase. What's causing the big increase now?
- ajb 5y agoRIPE ran out of spare addresses at the end of 2019. After the queueing system was instituted some organisations must have returned some address blocks, which were used during 2020 and 2021, and my guess is that these have now run out. (it could just be that the return rate is below the request rate, but IMO the graph looks too straight for that).
- zauguin 5y agoIf you look at the graph for the address pool (https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/ipv4/ipv4-pool https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/ipv4/ipv4-pool) you see that the number of available addresses rose starting from February 2020 and then was rather constant until decreasing again in August/September before running out now. To me the timing looks like it's Covid related, I guess many companies didn't want to change their addresses while the admins couldn't get physical access to the servers...
- jakub_g 5y agoPrevious big spike at beginning of chart was also in November, in 2019. Can someone knowledgable explain why is this the case?
- teaearlgraycold 5y agoBlack Friday subnet prices are hard to ignore.
- w3ll_w3ll_w3ll 5y ago"Since the RIPE NCC began operations in 1992, we have been responsible for distributing IP addresses and AS Numbers in our service region. In November 2019, we exhausted our remaining IPv4 pool. This means that networks in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia are no longer able to receive “new” IPv4 addresses from us that haven’t previously been used by another network."
- ghshephard 5y agoAt some point, some low-hanging companies are just going to start running IPv6 only applications and deal with the fall-out of some nn% of their customer not being compatible. Those customers will complain to their ISPs, which will provide incentive to get IPv6 deployed (should have been done 10 years ago honestly at any credible ISP). Getting the number closer to 100% will make it easier for new companies to deploy IPv6 only, until we get to the point that IPv4 is seen as some legacy thing that isn't relevant but used to be important in the dark ages of Web Deployments. I'm very surprised at work and at home how often most of my Internet communications is running over IPv6. There are some surprising exceptions though [1]. I'd be willing to place a wager that there will be a $100mm company that is only IPv6 by 2030. And that the "Default IPv6 only on the Internet unless there is some weird edge case" will occur by 2040. IPv4 as a protocol, though, will never, ever, go away - we'll see it widely deployed for the next 100 years. [1] $ dig news.ycombinator.com AAAA ; <<>> DiG 9.16.1-Ubuntu <<>> news.ycombinator.com AAAA ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 46616 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 65494 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;news.ycombinator.com. IN AAAA ;; Query time: 176 msec ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.53#53(127.0.0.53) ;; WHEN: Thu Dec 09 15:21:09 EST 2021 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 49
- mdaniel 5y ago> Those customers will complain to their ISPs, which will provide incentive to get IPv6 deployed Your experience with huge ISPs has obviously been different from mine. I am deeply grateful that I've benefited from two "first world" advantages: Comcast has (surprisingly) been very proactive about IPv6 support, and here in the Bay Area I have actual competition available for me to switch to. But in other parts of the country, that's for sure not true --- to address the dig portion of your comment, the AAAA record (err, or lack of it) for github.com likely is a lot more impactful than HN It's not that I think major users are going to switch, but I'll point out that GitLab actually does have AAAA records
- walrus01 5y agofun fact: comcast have been proactive about ipv6 because their management network grew so large and unwieldy, through various acquisitions and long term inefficient use of space, that ipv4 RFC1918 10/8 (and 192.168 etc) was no longer sufficient to address all of their individual netblocks. turns out that if you allocate a private /24 to every POP you can absolutely exhaust 10/8 in a big last mile ISP. they started with ipv6 for their own management network before any public netblocks started getting rolled out to customers.
- graton 5y agoMakes me think I should figure out how to sell my /24 ARIN block I registered years ago. I wonder what it is worth...
- School-Cotton 5y agoSeems to be around $10k-15k, according to https://auctions.ipv4.global/prior-sales https://auctions.ipv4.global/prior-sales .
- Maxburn 5y agoDang, that's more than I was thinking.
- moduspol 5y agoI'd only do that if you think it's likely to decrease in value. Do you think it'll be more or less valuable in 5-10 years?
- judge2020 5y agoI imagine some critical mass will be reached where cloud providers start charging exuberant fees for IPv4 addresses and many businesses go IPv6 only (which wouldn't even be a big hit for mobile users[0]), and this news will be widespread enough to encourage ISPs to actually roll it out at a faster pace. Now, whether that's in 10 years or 20 is to-be-seen, but I agree with you and I doubt the rollout of IPv6 hits the point where people stop wanting IPv4 addresses all-together within 30 years. 0: most all cellular/5g networks already provide IPv6 since even CGNAT is expensive compared to assigning a /128 per-device. iPhone 13 (or ios 15 with iPhone 12) also has a 'data mode' switch, which will use 5G if it's faster than the local wifi - this likely opens up the device using cellular to allow access to IPv6-only sites when their WiFi doesn't support it.
- walrus01 5y agoabout $45 an IP right now if you're eligible to transfer out, but if you only have one /24, I'd hold onto it.
- jagger27 5y agoLIR = Local Internet Registry, for those wondering. Funny how their site has a handy pop-up definition when you hover over IPv4, but not for LIR.
- baggy_trough 5y agoI wish Google Cloud Platform would support ipv6 (internally).
- judge2020 5y agoOr Azure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29327773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29327773
- zokier 5y agoAt least AWS is slowly creeping towards supporting IPv6: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/networking-and-content-delivery/introducing-ipv6-only-subnets-and-ec2-instances/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/networking-and-content-delivery... https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/11/application-load-balancer-network-load-balancer-end-to-end-ipv6-support/ https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2021/11/applicati... I guess we can thank US government partially for that: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/aws-enables-us-federal-governments-move-ipv6/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/aws-enables-us-fed...
- jandrese 5y agoAll of the cloud providers and even VPS services have been dragging their heels on IPv6 for ages and it makes no sense to me. These services could all benefit from having IPv6 only options for people who don't need IPv4 addresses. V4 addresses are turning into real money, you would expect the services to try to optimize their use to save costs. Even worse is when someone deploys IPv6 but does it in a comically nonsensical way like Digital Ocean[1]. Yes, you read that right, they assign /124s even though the smallest allocation is supposed to be a /64. And if you think this means you're sharing the same IPv6 address with virtually every other droplet in a datacenter, you would be right. Welcome to every blacklist everywhere. It is kind of like hosting an entire datacenter off of a single IPv4 address. [1] https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/ipv6/ https://docs.digitalocean.com/products/networking/ipv6/
- pablodavila 5y agoFly posted a sort of related blog post about IPv4 https://fly.io/blog/32-bit-real-estate/ https://fly.io/blog/32-bit-real-estate/
- slivanes 5y agoAm I right in thinking that IPv4 will only go away if all clients can support IPv6? For example, there are many embedded devices that will never be updated to have dualstack (including many home routers). Does anyone have IPv6 only facing servers for public consumption without any IPv4 alternatives?
- unilynx 5y ago> Does anyone have IPv6 only facing servers for public consumption without any IPv4 alternatives? well, kame.net will only give you a dancing turtle over ipv6..
- ghshephard 5y agoHome routers have a very short life-cycle. Most of them have a median life of < 10 years, and it's reasonable to expect that the majority of them will be upgraded every 20 years or so. It's the other embedded (manufacturing, utility, etc...) devices that have 20+ year median lives that will prevent IPv4 from ever going away. Dual Stack (as the vast majority of Windows/MacOS/Linux/BSD systems are capable of) - creates a nice transition path - slowly but surely more and more IPv6 creeps into DNS/Local Addresses. If you deployed a IPv6 only facing server today - then some 20-30% +/- of your potential customer base wouldn't be able to connect - but that number will go down by 1-2% each year for the next while, until, in 10-15 years, you'll be able to reach 98+% of your audience, so you'll say WTH and go for it.
- edgyquant 5y agoI worked IT for years before switching to programming and I’ve almost never seen a home router last 10 years, let alone 20.
- Gigachad 5y agoYou probably want to upgrade sooner for faster wifi anyway. My router I only just got from my ISP caps out at 100Mbps while the ISP provides gigabit speeds.
- 5y ago
- geek_at 5y agoJust yesterday I witched my office network to IPv6 and one thought kept creeping in regarding security. If I'm on IPv6 there is no NAT and it's basically security by obscurity (not really but port scans would take forever) What if I host a small web script on my machine and I surf the web with my IPv6. Couldn't all website owners do port scans on my address (because they obviously see my address) and then access my local site or even God forbid one of my staff is running an unpatched windows. How is it safe if it's basically (in ipv4 terms) a 1:1 NAT for all my machines?
- awestroke 5y agoWhy can you not have NAT when running the network on IPv6? I've never seen anyone explain this
- hvgk 5y agoNAT is a workaround for the small amount of address space that was allocated originally. That's not the case on IPv6. I'm sure you can NAT stuff but why the hell would you want to do that and have to maintain all the stateful pain in the ass stuff required such as NAT tables which are going to be much larger.
- awestroke 5y agoTo prevent the machines in the network from being exposed publicly
- nybble41 5y agoIf you have machines in the network which you don't trust to handle their own incoming connections securely you can block those connections at the firewall, without port or address translation. Ideally you'd put those on hosts on their own locked-down VLAN. NAT (or NAPT) doesn't add any security (see: NAT traversal) and having different internal vs. external addresses significantly increases the complexity of the system—not just the router but applications as well, which are forced to deal with their public addresses and ports differing from the ones they were assigned.
- jakub_g 5y agoIPv6 adoption graph: 32.59% as of today, as measured by Google https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html
- mlyle 5y ago"We are continuously measuring the availability of IPv6 connectivity among Google users. The graph shows the percentage of users that access Google over IPv6." I'm not sure what this graph means. The first sentence implies it's the number of users with IPV6 connectivity. The second sentence implies it's the number of users that access over IPV6-- but a big subset of users with valid IPV6 connectivity might end up only connecting with IPV4 for various reasons.
- bostonpete 5y agoThe second sentence explicitly tells you what the graph is showing. The first sentence doesn't contradict that, it just seems to provide some context. (?)
- ratorx 5y agoThe first sentence is correct. It should be “that can access Google over IPv6”.
- lgierth 5y agoI registered with RIPE this year, requested an IPv4 /24 in July, and got it immediately. I guess RIPE's last blocks depleted in November? Market prices on the other hand have exploded this year, $50 per address isn't uncommon anymore.
- jandrese 5y agoAccording to the linked article there was no wait until about a month ago, except for a short blip at the end of 2019. But now the waiting list is growing rapidly and the wait is increasing by about three quarters of a day per day.
- exabrial 5y agoHN doesn't like to hear this, but the shortage crated is artificial, and there also is nothing wrong with NAT. First, running exactly one open port per IP (443 or 80) is the worst use of resources. The whole "crisis" could be solved with simple browser support of something like SRV records. This could be implemented with "here and now" technology, rather than adopting a new standard for the entire internet backbone. Next, widespread use of NAT provides plausible deniability for everyone on the internet. Google, Facebook, Comcast, Verizon, etc push ipv6 hard in order to enable causing tracking of individual traffic on the internet. These institutions have exactly 0 business knowing how many physical devices are behind a firewall. No, ipv6 privacy extensions do not provide the same sort of anonymity that a NAT firewall does before you hit that downvote button and take away some of my fake internet points.
- gm 5y agoThat's a very pre-emptively defensive statement... Why doesn't HN like to hear this?
- exabrial 5y agoI've been downvoted in the past for pointing out what everyone says works in theory vs what actually happens in the real world.
- Arnt 5y agoNAT works for some use cases, not so well for others. I know a database that's updated every night via a server-to-server connection that passes five levels of NAT, and when that crontab broke someone had to fix it by finding and correcting a bug in a 1500-line NAT configuration on one important router where the consequences of a mistake would be very bad indeed. It works in the sense that the database is updated, but I cannot help thinking of Truth 3 in RFC1925.
- dang 5y agoOk, but please don't bait the community like that. Pre-emptive defensiveness puts a negative torque on conversation.
- woofcat 5y agoI'm really curious when this will change. In Canada, my home internet provider and cellular provider are both ipv4 only. I've asked about it in the past and the answer seems to constantly be "Meh".
- tempnow987 5y agoJust charge $5/year/ip to all existing holders. A fair bit of wasted space would free up fast.
- wmf 5y agoIP Georgism.
- jl6 5y agoStrictly limited supply… check. Tradable… check. Has some inherent usefulness… check. Price is rising rapidly… check. IPv4 is going to live forever as a non-crypto coin!
- Thorentis 5y agoIPv4 NFTs will surely become a thing soon.
- maccolgan 5y agoThat might actually be another useful case for a NFT, /24 blocks can be traded in real time and when combined with the RPKI can be used as proof of ownership.
- jayflux 5y ago> Tradable… check. I know you’re joking but it’s not tradable (by home users). I can’t just sell my IP address to someone else. ISPs.. maybe, but I can imagine they make more money continuously leasing them out than selling them for a one off payment.
- wmf 5y agoOf course you can't sell property that you are renting. Right now mostly unused IPs are being sold off, but in a few years we might see companies optimizing their networks to free up addresses and sell them.
- scandox 5y agoAt the General Meeting in November, RIPE proposed some substantial changes to the charging scheme, to be implemented from 2023 (1 year away), and one notable difference is that RIPE is considering charging a fair market value for IPv4 assignments, in addition, to set up and maintenance fees. That is the cause of the current spike/backlog.
- wmf 5y agoBut since IPv4 has run out there won't be any new assignments?
- tialaramex 5y agoOn the contrary, assignments continue. Suppose Alice wants to sell a /16 to Bob. The mechanism goes like this: Bob agrees to pay Alice $5 for this address block, Bob writes up paperwork saying why Bob needs a /16, and sends it to RIPE. Alice sends RIPE paperwork saying she doesn't need this /16 any more, and has agreed a deal to sell it to Bob. RIPE checks the paperwork matches, and transfers this /16 from Alice to Bob. They can charge whatever they choose for this, RIPE's members are the LIRs who are paying those fees (including Alice and Bob), so they're effectively agreeing among themselves how to pay for the existence of the RIR. However, this entry is about the Waiting List, which is for a steady trickle of small blocks (one /24 each) just to get new members started. The idea is, you need a few IPv4 addresses for say, the new Spanish ISP you started, even if it's mostly an IPv6 ISP, so here is a small block for that purpose.
- wmf 5y agoI understand how transfers work, but is RIPE really planning to charge $50 per IP or more for transfers? What would they even do with the resulting billions in revenue?
- tialaramex 5y agoCurrently RIPE costs maybe €35M per year to run and does maybe 5000 transfers per year. So, not billions of dollars. The exact scheme has not been determined, the proposal sketched was that a /24 would cost maybe €5000 in 2023. Maybe they do 4000 of those, that's €20M. The rationale is, industry consolidation means that per-LIR fees either need to increase substantially over the next decade (unfriendly to small members, forcing further consolidation) or a new fee mechanism is needed. Understandably members who scarcely need RIPE services because they have a perfectly nice IPv6 block are frustrated to see that members paying the same annual fee incur significant staff time (meaning more FTE cost) because their stupid IPv4 renumbering changes mean paperwork. So, why not make that cost money?
- Thorentis 5y agoIPv6 is a pain in the ass to work with and think about. We should have added extra octets to IPv4 and been done with it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- GSGBen 5y agoIPv6 works great for small users and large users, but is a pain for the middle at the moment: What's the one-true, best-practise, everyone-accepts-it, supported-almost-everywhere way to provide dual ISP connectivity to an SMB with IPv6? Once they solve the class of problems like that it'll take off a little faster.
- zinekeller 5y agoNo-one really talks about this. Multi-homing tends to revolve around BGP with IPv6, which while is good technically, the actual process of getting an AS outside of RIPE is bonkers (plus, regardless of that you really need to shell out money).
- GSGBen 5y agoYep, if you can even get one! Someone posted on r/ipv6 that they tried to get some provider-independent space from ARIN for an SMB client and got rejected. If you can't rely on getting one then you can't make that your standard process at all.