10 ms·

Posters of the IPv4 and IPv6 internet as of Jan 1, 2023

• _eht 4y ago
  Serious question: why would I want to purchase this as a poster? Asking as a nerd, but maybe not a very specific data oriented nerd.
  • doodlesdev 4y ago
    I agree, it would be much cooler to 3D print it, using the image as a heightmap. Maybe even make 4 separate pieces to increase scale. Preferably in a FOSS 3D printer using home-made plastic, with the models uploaded from a PDP-11 only using the shell.
    • loveparade 4y ago
      I agree, but I think it would almost as cool to reproduce the 3D model in Minecraft, hire people to keep it up-to-date in real time, and then project that into your room. Or maybe a stadium.
  • joe-collins 4y ago
    I could see it being a neat illustration in a high school classroom.
  • Underphil 4y ago
    Don't really understand the purpose of this question. If you want it, you want it. If you don't, you don't.
  • themoonisachees 4y ago
    I find these maps make great screensavers or desktop backgrounds. Why not a poster? That said maybe I'll wait a few years before ordering the ipv6 poster, I have black paper at home.
  • mike_hock 4y ago
    For decorative purposes. Just like having a globe or a map.
• herpderperator 4y ago
  Why does Ford still have an entire /8 (and even worse, completely unused)?
  • _eht 4y ago
    Why does McDonald’s own so much prime real estate? Kind of a misguided question imo.
    • suprjami 4y ago
      Wrong answer.
    • mrweasel 4y ago
      Because they're a real estate company, disguised as a fast food chain. Ford on the other hand isn't an internet company, but their IPv4 range represent and actual value on their balance sheets. Realistically, Ford may also have use their IP range in a kinda of haphazardly way, simply because they never had a shortage or had to deal with multiple public range. So cleaning up their network, to be able to free any number of IPs would be a lot of work, at a high cost, with no real benefit for the company. Sure they could sell the surplus IPs, but they aren't that strapped for cash.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • kstrauser 4y ago
    Short answer: because they got there first. Longer answer: it doesn’t really matter in the scheme of things. I saw where someone did the math of recovering all the corporate /8s (assuming that there was a justifiable reason for repossessing address space that they requested and were allocated fair and square). It would extend the IPv4 timeline by like a month and a half. IPv4 is used up, and it’d be exceptionally difficult and expensive to claw back subnets.
    • iforgotpassword 4y ago
• WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  In considering the rollout of IPv6, end users often get marginalized. This is frustrating to me. When we try to highlight ISPs who refuse to deploy IPv6, mobile services get highlighted - as if homes and businesses could just use them instead of wireline. If that doesn't end the discussion then IPv6 acolytes will go on about transit traffic or anything else until IPv4-only users go away and stop ruining their optimism. Personally, I'm very positive about IPv6. I find a lot to like in the protocol. From an end user standpoint tho, it's very much a club. If your ISP is in you're golden. If not, you don't exist to other members.
  • _eht 4y ago
    > Personally, I'm very positive about IPv6. I find a lot to like in the protocol Please expand on this (besides ‘wow such large numbers’…). I’ll take my answer off the air.
    • WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
      I enjoy how RA handles address assignment. I like how the address space feels huge and uncrowded (almost private), like how internet v1 once did. I like it when the lightbulbs go off the first time I get a service working. I like feeling like a member of the club.
      • _eht 4y ago
        > I like how the address space feels huge and uncrowded… ^^ in case anyone is wondering why IPv6 is where it’s at after a decade… Sigh.
        • Volundr 4y ago
          I don't see anything wrong with this being a pro. At a previous company I worked at, this was literally the impetus for going IPv6. We were in a regional business and were growing by acquiring companies in other regions. Every new company we acquired, we had the major pain of making the networks talk. Almost everyone is using 192.168.0.0/16 or 10.0.0.0/8. IP conflicts were a given, and re-address networks was a big painful operation. NATs were an option, but came with their own permanent complications. IPv6 made it go away. If the new site already had IPv6, collisions were still a non-issue, and if they didn't, well getting them IPv6 ready was easier than re-address everything. Once they were IPv6 ready we could go ahead and establish VPNs, and with most traffic now going over IPv6 we could re-address IPv4 without causing significant outages. IPv6 has other advantages, better multicast, better routing, flow labeling, automatic link-local addressing, but the large IP space is definitely the elephant in the room.
• ggm 4y ago
  IPv6 is handed out using sparse allocation inside /12 from IANA ensuring two goals: minimal recall on IANA and maximum utilisation inside each /12 preserving second call headroom for the original delegates announcing the space in BGP. They can take a /32 to a 31 or 30 or 26 or whatever and not have to announce disaggregated blocks in BGP. (They can disaggregate, but it's not forced by being given discontinuous blocks) The sparse model is like binary chop: it tends to equalise the size of the "hole" across all delegations. It's a reservation system without having to make reservations: within limits everyone who hasn't yet requested subsequent space can request it, and everyone within reason has the same growth potential to market against other delegates of the same size at that point in time. APNIC runs modified sparse: the /12 is divided up into pools and bigger and smaller parts are used to make two sets of binary chop headroom reflecting the scale. The outcome should be visible in the chart: a grey peppering of blocks spread throughout the /12s and for APNIC evidence of at least two densities of scatter. Broadly speaking, it's worked. The RIR collectively haven't gone back to IANA very often, a lot of IPv6 space remains. Scarcity isn't driving the dynamics of BGP announcement and disaggregation. Compare that to IPv4, costs of entry to market for new players, avg number of prefixes and relative disaggregation of holdings. (Disclaimer: work in an RIR)
  • walrus01 4y ago
    As an example of how big ipv6 is, we got a /29 from ripe at a not very big at all ISP, which even if we had handed out a /48 to each and every DIA customer physical location/cpe, would have lasted us at our projected growth rate for the next several hundred years. And that was in addition to the ARIN /32 we already had.
    • preisschild 4y ago
      I've got my own homelab /44 prefix for only 15€/yr. /48 would have been fine too, but /44 was the smallest they had.
      • sgjohnson 4y ago
        From some LIRs you can get an ASN + a /40 for life for $50. And even less if they decide to do a sale. And the /40 would be an actual "ASSIGNED-BY-LIR" sub-allocation that you could also sub-allocate as you see fit.
• dallamaneni 4y ago
  IPv6 is so expansive and seemingly endless that it reminds me of driving through the Midwest
  • sph 4y ago
    And consider they're only showing 2000::/4, so that chart only represents 1/16th of the entire IPv6 space.
• 9edda054-232f 4y ago
  The 2006 version from xkcd https://xkcd.com/195/ https://xkcd.com/195/
• just_steve_h 4y ago
  Really surprised no one has yet posted the software that’s almost certainly used to create these images, the Measurement Factory’s ipv4-heatmap package, on GitHub here: https://github.com/measurement-factory/ipv4-heatmap https://github.com/measurement-factory/ipv4-heatmap And, yes, it was absolutely inspired by Randall Munroe’s xkcd Map of the Internet, which someone has already linked. There’s a fork that uses ColorBrewer palettes, which may be what they actually used: https://github.com/hrbrmstr/ipv4-heatmap https://github.com/hrbrmstr/ipv4-heatmap (I used to work at Akamai and used this to produce monthly versions with each /24 colored based upon how many addresses within it had connected to the company’s network.)
  • thrdbndndn 4y ago
    Because it was already mentioned in TFA.
• gorgoiler 4y ago
  The ghostly amount of v6 space is so exciting to see. One day we’ll need to physically route a whole block to another planet — there’s no point using BGP when the ping from Earth to Mercury is 230,000ms at best. I love IPv6 and it’s so exciting to see it used widely at last. My mobile device is v6 although it’s still dual stack. Home networks are doomed to by v4 forever so your 1990s eToaster can display Yahoo! News! but I wonder how many ISPs are doing 4to6 or CGNAT nowadays? That’s what my cell provider does. I only know a little bit about BGP. Why does Tesla announce 6x /48s instead of having a /32 of their own and handling their routing internally? https://bgp.he.net/AS394161#_prefixes6 https://bgp.he.net/AS394161#_prefixes6
  • Sunspark 4y ago
    My ISP to this day still doesn't have dual-stack. It makes a 6rd tunnel available to their users as a "beta" (for years). I find it mystifying to be honest. I know for a fact they have a nice modern facility and an expert head sysadmin. They even have a local fiber optic network. It makes no sense to me that they're clinging so tightly to IPv4.
    • charcircuit 4y ago
      What is the benefit to the ISP in supporting IPv6 to justify the extra cost of the support?
      • Sunspark 4y ago
        Some devices coming out now from Google, etc. are IPv6-only and do not support 6rd tunnels at all. Possible further benefit, reaching India and China who certainly aren't issuing IPv4. Hopefully the day comes when people can get static IPv6 addresses instead of a dynamic one behind an ISP NAT.
        • toast0 4y ago
          > Possible further benefit, reaching India and China who certainly aren't issuing IPv4. This is important for servers, but not so much for consumers, IMHO. Sites in India and China are highly likely to be dual stacked, so v4 only users aren't likely to be missing any content at least currently. Although certainly missing access to v6 preferred peers. There's very few really v6only use cases out there yet, almost every consumer access network has some way to get to v4, there's too much v4 only content not to; even if the v4 access is much worse than v6, as it sometimes is.
• wielebny 4y ago
  Is 3ffe::/16 (6bone) still active on the Internet?
  • irdc 4y ago
    It’s been shutdown since 2006: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3701 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3701
• usr1106 4y ago
  There is quite a block of multicast addresses in IPv4. Is it used for anything in real life?
  • kimburgess 4y ago
    Signal distribution (specifically audio and video) uses it heavily with a smattering of different protocols building on RTP. Major examples are things like media production facilities running on SMPTE 2110, live and installed sound systems built around Dante/AES67, IPTV systems in hotels, and network media systems within office environments. Precision Time Protocol (which many if the above are also dependant on) is also based around it and used across a number of domains where tight clock sync is required.
  • midasuni 4y ago
    Use it all the time. If you watched the fireworks on TV in the U.K. last night that was sent via multicast from the river for example. Closed circuit IPTV systems use it constantly. I’ve got about 500 addresses ok my network encoding different video and audio channels for desktop use. That said I only use addresses in the 239/8 and 224/8.
• nvahalik 4y ago
  Why does it all start with "2"? e.g. 2000 -> 2f00? Where are the other prefix segments?
  • Melkman 4y ago
    Because IANA started delegating prefixes starting with 2. And haven't done enough delegations to go to 3. Prefixes starting with 0 of F are also in use for mapping IPv4 addresses to IPv6, link local and multicast adressing and other special needs.
  • nibbleshifter 4y ago
    As yet unissued, according to the page.
  • throw0101c 4y ago
    > Where are the other prefix segments? Currently not needed. The IETF/IANA folks were a bit cautious, so only 2000::/3 is officially designated to be assigned. If, a few years down the road, they find out that a mistake was someone made in address allocations, they can then 'start over' from the lessons learned, and start assigning things from 4000::/3. If they made a mistake again, they can start over again with 6000::/3. And then 8000::/3, a000::/3, and c000::/3. * https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-space/ipv6-address-space.xhtml https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-space/ipv6-add... So that's why all global unicast addresses start with 2: they're to be 'conservative' in what is usable so that if there are problems there is room for corrections in the coming years/decades/centuries. We don't want to have to go through another IP protocol transition.
• NKosmatos 4y ago
  I still remember my university mini project from 20-25 years ago about the exhaustion of the IPv4 address space :-) Nice poster/visualization, even with the small preview image.
• rossmohax 4y ago
  IPv6 only is still unusuable :( I bought new Sony TV and allocated it a new VLAN with IPv6 only network just to see how it works TV couldn't even detect that it connected to the internet, despite it receiving ipv6 address from my router. It looks like it couldn't use IPv6 DNS servers. If I try to configure IP address statically it wont let me enter IPv6 address at all.
  • sekh60 4y ago
    We have a Sony Bravia from two years ago. Android TV, I forget the model number. It seems to be an Android problem is an ipv6 DNS server is unreachable, or phones and tablets, all Android, continuously attempt to disconnect and reconnect to the network. That said once I got my DNS servers listening on V6 they all seem to work.
• daneel_w 4y ago
  Can anyone write a little bit on 240.0.0.0/4 ("Future use"), 48.0.0.0/8 ("Prudential securities", same as Wachovia?) and 25.0.0.0/8, what they are about and why they're seemingly entirely unused?
  • mkj 4y ago
    240 is multicast etc? 25 is UK defence, also used by some companies internally. I'm also curious about 48.
    • daneel_w 4y ago
      "240 is multicast etc?" That would be 224.0.0.0/4, no?
      • mkj 4y ago
        Oops, you're right
  • themoonisachees 4y ago
    240/4 ("class E") addresses were intended a buffer for future allocation, but they can't use it for global unicast because a lot of equipment considers any IP above 239.255.255.255 to be invalid. There have been RFCs to make it formally global-unicast and local-unicast but none have succeeded because of the above-mentionned poorly programmed equipment. That said, if you know your equipment can handle it like some network operators know theirs can, there is nothing stopping you from using it as a /4 local address space.
    • daneel_w 4y ago
      "That said, if you know your equipment can handle it like some network operators know theirs can, there is nothing stopping you from using it as a /4 local address space." Though that would just exarcerbate the problem by producing yet more resistance against allowing that gigantic network to become useful public space.
    • 4y ago
• dx034 4y ago
  Does anyone have a good resource to really get ipv6? I have an intuitive understanding of ipv4 but still struggle to understand ipv6 in a way that would make me feel comfortable switching over. So far, all docs I read made it look vastly more complicated than ipv4.
  • Volundr 4y ago
    Not IPv6 specific, but I can't recommend Networking for System Administrators by Michael Lucas highly enough. Very well written and easy to understand.
  • mgbmtl 4y ago
    What kind of user/admin are you? To setup a LAN, to setup servers, other? If it's a LAN, what kind of router do you have? I agree many howtos tend to get into the little obscure differences and weird rabbit holes (ex: tunnelling).
• tommoor 4y ago
  So how do we get those IPv4 blocks back from Ford and Prudential?
  • mixdup 4y ago
    Dump trucks full of unmarked non-sequential US currency
• adrium 4y ago
  240/4 was reserved for future use more than 30 years ago. When is 'the future' if not now. Furthermore, reservations for 0/8, 127/8, and 224/4 seem mostly useless at this point. Also Ford, Daimler, and Prudential owning huge network blocks and neither even doing business in networking, nor announcing prefixes can be referred to as outright IP squatting (if that term exists). The US DOD seems to be a squatter, too. Based on professional experience, I doubt that networking equipment can not handle reserved blocks. And if it does not indeed, patches could be provided by vendors for sure within reasonable time. The problem is not severe enough: neither for a switch to IPv6 (also conceived almost 30 years ago!) nor to make use of unused blocks. I refuse to believe that IPv4 address exhaustion is actually a thing.
  • nerdbert 4y ago
    Imagine how many problems would be caused by releasing 0/8 and 127/8 space. There are so many places those are hardcoded, including an uncountable number of internal company applications.
    • adrium 4y ago
      It is irresponsible to use (let alone to hardcode) those addresses in the first place. But in any case, fortunately, software can be patched and it has been done so already in 'tricky' cases: Y2K and X.509 UTCTIME are examples. My company operates big networks and it caught us off guard when 44/8 got used on the public Internet. Internal tooling used the space because it was assumed to be non-routable. Assumptions like this always carry a risk and sooner or later, they need to be fixed. In our case, a workaround could be produced within hours, and it was fixed within weeks. 0/8 support has been added in the Linux kernel as well. Edit: scdown.qq.com resolves to 0.0.0.1 and is possibly related to WeChat. I am not sure, if the address is actually routable in China, though.
      • nerdbert 4y ago
        I doubt anything containing 0.0.0.1 is advertised in China (it's definitely not outside of China). Looks like an address someone would use to indicate an error condition. ... which is just another example of the zillions of cases that would have to be dealt with. Sure, each one is probably quite easy. But the sheer number of them is huge, and many of them will only be uncovered after they fail, setting off a frantic search for the retired guy with the source code. With Y2K there was a combination of self-interest and hysteria that motivated organizations to tackle it. With this, it's harder to make that case because IPv6 is here already. I'm sure very few of those applications with hardcoded 0.0.0.0/8 are IPv6-ready, but everyone else can move ahead with IPv6 and those old apps will keep working for years to come. Unleashing 172.0.52.7 as someone's residential IP address will result in seemingly random failures that cause headaches for the ISP, application developers, and corporate IT departments. It'll be a very unpopular idea.
• N19PEDL2 4y ago
  I noticed that 240.0.0.0/4 is reserved for "Future Use". As IPv4 is going to be replaced by v6 (slowly, ok, but still...), what is that future use supposed to be? Edit: I just saw that my question has already been answered in this thread.