7 ms·

ARIN allocated free IPv4 addresses almost exhausted

56 points by brohee 13y ago

brohee 13y ago
Edit: I was wrong, most of the addresses on that page have been allocated. This is a bit disingenuous btw, they are down to 1.5 /8 in the class A space, but have quit a few more /8 in class b and class C space. See https://www.arin.net/knowledge/ip_blocks.html https://www.arin.net/knowledge/ip_blocks.html Still, people not having a plan should really hurry...
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  No, there are only the equivalent of 1.5 /8s altogether.
  - brohee 13y ago
    Yup, some ARIN pages are a bit unclear about what is spent and what is not, I got a bit confused by it...
- darkr 13y ago
  /8 is CIDR notation, CIDR standing for ClassLESS Inter-Domain Routing. Classful network architecture died a couple of decades ago, I'm not sure the term still persists with people erroneously substituting class A/B/C to describe any of /24, /16, /12 or /8 IPv4 networks, sometimes as part of an RFC 1918 network, sometimes not..
- sergiotapia 13y ago
  Guys let's not vote down people who contribute to the discussion even if they're wrong. Voting a comment down should be reserved for trolls or people who just derail threads.
jlgaddis 13y ago
ARIN IPv4 Countdown Plan: https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_countdown.html https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_countdown.html
wilhil 13y ago
RIPE is pretty much out now, they only allocate a single /22 to new registrants, or a /24 to existing members, and that is it. Working at a new startup ISP, and sort of seeing this from the inside, I think the whole process is a complete joke. ANYONE who wants IPs can easily get them, average cost is about £10-£20 each, and a whole ip broker industry seems to have popped up over the last few years... Just google "Buy IP address", "IP Broker" or similar. The guidelines state that when you are not using an IP, you simply hand it back - but - I don't think ANYONE does this, and why would they as they are both free, there is no verification/auditing, and they are now like gold dust. Auditing is basically just a list of IPs and saying what you are using them for. Companies approach all the time saying that they have xx IPs for sale, and the official line when you ask "why are they available" is usually, "we can reorganise our network so we no longer require them"... In reality, I am sure they apply entire ranges to bogus interfaces just to make them look in use. It really annoys me that this side of the industry doesn't get more exposure!
- thirdsight 13y ago
  Well if it wasn't for all the heel-dragging with IPv6, this wouldn't be a problem.
  - wilhil 13y ago
    IPv6 just won't happen fully any time soon... People are just kidding themselves. Too many "big" networks have admins who don't update their knowledge and are clueless about IPv6 - At some events where I see network admins, you can ask simple questions and judging by their body language, you know they are guessing/are clueless about IPv6. On top of this, some really high end network equipment that is still available now from some (high end) vendors is not 100% IPv6 compliant or has weird bugs, and, if network admins have recommended this equipment, they feel uncomfortable telling people it isn't up to scratch after their companies have invested significant money... so... this just makes the whole process stall. (Personal experience, not from the current job!) IPv6 is the future, but, being realistic, I don't see it happening any time soon.
    - 13y ago
tankenmate 13y ago
And ISPs in the US will do what ISPs did elsewhere; point to their IPv6 trial as "evidence" of their IPv6 rollout and continue to consume IPv4 address space until the disaster hits. Also more and more ISPs will prefer to roll out Carrier Grade NAT (CGNAT) than bother to update the firmware and configuration of their routers and more importantly due to substandard consumer home routers and other CPE; expect your games and P2P based software that doesn't support UPnP port forwarding to choke.
- anonymfus 13y ago
  >Carrier Grade NAT >that doesn't support UPnP port forwarding Wait, there are Carrier Grade NATs with UPnP support?
  - tankenmate 13y ago
    Most don't you are right, but some are toying with the idea of proxying UPnP requests to "NAT Centres" on the carriers backbone; there are a significant percentage of users who will refuse to put down their controllers and will walk to another provider. The other way this may be solved is to form a technology solution with the console makers to have a drop in solution at the API level; obviously this will disadvantage smaller developers who can't pay to play (not that this will bother the carriers overly). I suspect most likely in the US there will be a nuisance fee add on to your internet connection in order to play "P2P" games (x.ref current Net Nutrality battles in the courts)
- devicenull 13y ago
  Most games don't support v6 anyway, so it's not like that would help.
ay 13y ago
Remember the World IPv6 day ? In 2014 a few of us (about a hundred of folks around the world at the moment) are going to do a "World IPv6 only day" (turn off IPv4) on the 06/06/2014, for ourselves. If we can't work successfully during this day using IPv6 only - then we'll take a day off (Conveniently, it's Friday). If you are someone doing computer networking professionally - why not join us ? We're tracking the count of those who will turn the legacy IP off for a day via an Avaaz "petition to all the computer professionals". http://preview.tinyurl.com/noipv4 http://preview.tinyurl.com/noipv4
- justincormack 13y ago
  But we won't be able to browse Hacker News! (Even though they use Cloudflare now and could just turn on the AAAA records).
  - ay 13y ago
    Yeah maybe if we all ask pg nicely, he will do it ? :) As a backup plan - cloud-based NAT64 is a fair game for the day, search "go6 nat64".
    - justincormack 13y ago
      I never tried nat64. If github got their shit together and installed ipv6 I would be very happy...
      - ay 13y ago
        In github case since it's server side only and FOSS, they could probably go even further and go v6only and do stateless translation for ipv4 clients. But that's a bit too hardcore :-)
        justincormack 13y ago
        I don;t mind so long as I can stop running NAT so my test VMs can pull from github when everything else they do runs over v6... (actually buildbot doesn't work over v6 only either).
Sami_Lehtinen 13y ago
It has happaned earlier for other regions (RIPE & APNIC) and nobody really cared about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion#Exhaustion_dates_and_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion#Exhaus...
davidw 13y ago
Economics being the study of scarce resources, this is basically something that should be viewed through that lens. As the good becomes more scarce, it stands to reason that the price will go up and 1) encourage people to use them more efficiently, and 2) encourage people to look at alternatives like ipv6. It's probably a bit more complex in some ways, but I think the basic logic makes sense.
InTheSwiss 13y ago
I worked at Xerox for 8 years as a Solution Architect and it annoyed me so damn much that they are sitting on 13.* yet hardly using it and I can't imagine that has changed in the few years since I left. From what I can remember they were using less than 20% of the address space they have. Then again running out of v4 addresses is the best thing to happen really. Still it annoys me a big company can sit on so many addresses for no reason.
riobard 13y ago
What about adopting a subscription model? Let's say $10/IP/year. We are already doing this for an effectively infinite name space (domain names). The very limited IPv4 name space should be more expensive, right?
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  There actually is one, although it's a bit cheaper than that: See, e.g., https://www.arin.net/fees/fee_schedule.html https://www.arin.net/fees/fee_schedule.html
exabrial 13y ago
Not a big fan of ipv6... It did nothing to solve the global routing table size problem (in fact it made the problem much much worse). As a small network administrator, it adds nothing but headaches and will not increase the profitability of the company in any way. The only incentive right now is doomsday predictions and honestly there are better things to worry about. I'm hoping ipv6 gets an update and they design a more realistically usable protocol that offers advantages to the little guys.
- jlgaddis 13y ago
  > It did nothing to solve the global routing table size problem Well, at the time it was designed there was no "global routing table size problem".
  - exabrial 13y ago
    Good point actually... The problem is the "Global Routing table size problem" is a problem we actually have _right meow_, whereas the impending omg-out-of-ipv4-address problems is one that will stretch on for another 40+ years. If IPv6 actually solved the problem we have right now, people would adopt it. But IPv6 solves no current problems, it only creates new current problems. Anyway, I know IETF pisses vinegar all over NAT, but I'm hoping a grassroots effort pops up to solve the problem IPv6 should have actually solved. All we really need is forward-compatible extension to IPv4 that allows for easier incoming NAT traversal. A working solution would allow border routers to identify traffic belonging to an individual host on their network (in the private address space), while the client remains blissfully happy on traditional IPv4. The goal would be, merely update your border router to speak this extension to IPv4... rather than every device on your network and oh by the way, rewrite half the software you have that parses ipv4 addresses.
    - zanny 13y ago
      Currently I have to jump hoops through some bullcrap NAT maze of a public Internet to interact with anyone else. Properly distributed ipv6 addresses would fix that. So it does solve a problem I have now, in that I'd rather just tell people to click the accept connection button when I generate inbound traffic on their ipv6 address than to get them to figure out how to port forward off a router they have never touched the interface of before.
iptrading 13y ago
We have been brokering IPv4 addresses for many years, we brokered half the bids for the watershed sale of 660,000 addresses from Nortel to Microsoft in 2011. Because of the inter-regional transfers allowed between ARIN and APNIC, we consider that a single market. ARIN/APNIC prices are right around $8US per address. RIPE has no inter-regional transfer policy, and prices in RIPE are around $10US per address. Leasing of space is also available.
ldng 13y ago
IMHO, nothing is going to happen upon IPv4 exhaustion. IPv4 will become a luxury good whose price will rise quickly. Which leads me to wonder if the Internet at large isn't at a crossroad. Either IPv6 and Net Neutrality are adopted or a market (and a black market ?) is created for IPv4. Add to that the end of net neutrality and we'll enjoy the return of Compuserve/AOL and the demise of small independent entrepreneurship on the internet because of the higher cost of entry. Granted, it's worst case scenario, yet not impossible.

56 points by brohee 13y ago

Edit: I was wrong, most of the addresses on that page have been allocated. This is a bit disingenuous btw, they are down to 1.5 /8 in the class A space, but have quit a few more /8 in class b and class C space. See https://www.arin.net/knowledge/ip_blocks.html https://www.arin.net/knowledge/ip_blocks.html Still, people not having a plan should really hurry...

jlgaddis 13y ago
No, there are only the equivalent of 1.5 /8s altogether.
- brohee 13y ago
  Yup, some ARIN pages are a bit unclear about what is spent and what is not, I got a bit confused by it...
darkr 13y ago
/8 is CIDR notation, CIDR standing for ClassLESS Inter-Domain Routing. Classful network architecture died a couple of decades ago, I'm not sure the term still persists with people erroneously substituting class A/B/C to describe any of /24, /16, /12 or /8 IPv4 networks, sometimes as part of an RFC 1918 network, sometimes not..
sergiotapia 13y ago
Guys let's not vote down people who contribute to the discussion even if they're wrong. Voting a comment down should be reserved for trolls or people who just derail threads.

jlgaddis 13y ago

ARIN IPv4 Countdown Plan: https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_countdown.html https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_countdown.html

wilhil 13y ago

RIPE is pretty much out now, they only allocate a single /22 to new registrants, or a /24 to existing members, and that is it. Working at a new startup ISP, and sort of seeing this from the inside, I think the whole process is a complete joke. ANYONE who wants IPs can easily get them, average cost is about £10-£20 each, and a whole ip broker industry seems to have popped up over the last few years... Just google "Buy IP address", "IP Broker" or similar. The guidelines state that when you are not using an IP, you simply hand it back - but - I don't think ANYONE does this, and why would they as they are both free, there is no verification/auditing, and they are now like gold dust. Auditing is basically just a list of IPs and saying what you are using them for. Companies approach all the time saying that they have xx IPs for sale, and the official line when you ask "why are they available" is usually, "we can reorganise our network so we no longer require them"... In reality, I am sure they apply entire ranges to bogus interfaces just to make them look in use. It really annoys me that this side of the industry doesn't get more exposure!

thirdsight 13y ago
Well if it wasn't for all the heel-dragging with IPv6, this wouldn't be a problem.
- wilhil 13y ago
  IPv6 just won't happen fully any time soon... People are just kidding themselves. Too many "big" networks have admins who don't update their knowledge and are clueless about IPv6 - At some events where I see network admins, you can ask simple questions and judging by their body language, you know they are guessing/are clueless about IPv6. On top of this, some really high end network equipment that is still available now from some (high end) vendors is not 100% IPv6 compliant or has weird bugs, and, if network admins have recommended this equipment, they feel uncomfortable telling people it isn't up to scratch after their companies have invested significant money... so... this just makes the whole process stall. (Personal experience, not from the current job!) IPv6 is the future, but, being realistic, I don't see it happening any time soon.
  - 13y ago

tankenmate 13y ago

And ISPs in the US will do what ISPs did elsewhere; point to their IPv6 trial as "evidence" of their IPv6 rollout and continue to consume IPv4 address space until the disaster hits. Also more and more ISPs will prefer to roll out Carrier Grade NAT (CGNAT) than bother to update the firmware and configuration of their routers and more importantly due to substandard consumer home routers and other CPE; expect your games and P2P based software that doesn't support UPnP port forwarding to choke.

anonymfus 13y ago
>Carrier Grade NAT >that doesn't support UPnP port forwarding Wait, there are Carrier Grade NATs with UPnP support?
- tankenmate 13y ago
  Most don't you are right, but some are toying with the idea of proxying UPnP requests to "NAT Centres" on the carriers backbone; there are a significant percentage of users who will refuse to put down their controllers and will walk to another provider. The other way this may be solved is to form a technology solution with the console makers to have a drop in solution at the API level; obviously this will disadvantage smaller developers who can't pay to play (not that this will bother the carriers overly). I suspect most likely in the US there will be a nuisance fee add on to your internet connection in order to play "P2P" games (x.ref current Net Nutrality battles in the courts)
devicenull 13y ago
Most games don't support v6 anyway, so it's not like that would help.

ay 13y ago

Remember the World IPv6 day ? In 2014 a few of us (about a hundred of folks around the world at the moment) are going to do a "World IPv6 only day" (turn off IPv4) on the 06/06/2014, for ourselves. If we can't work successfully during this day using IPv6 only - then we'll take a day off (Conveniently, it's Friday). If you are someone doing computer networking professionally - why not join us ? We're tracking the count of those who will turn the legacy IP off for a day via an Avaaz "petition to all the computer professionals". http://preview.tinyurl.com/noipv4 http://preview.tinyurl.com/noipv4

justincormack 13y ago
But we won't be able to browse Hacker News! (Even though they use Cloudflare now and could just turn on the AAAA records).
- ay 13y ago
  Yeah maybe if we all ask pg nicely, he will do it ? :) As a backup plan - cloud-based NAT64 is a fair game for the day, search "go6 nat64".
  - justincormack 13y ago
    I never tried nat64. If github got their shit together and installed ipv6 I would be very happy...
    - ay 13y ago
      In github case since it's server side only and FOSS, they could probably go even further and go v6only and do stateless translation for ipv4 clients. But that's a bit too hardcore :-)
      - justincormack 13y ago
        I don;t mind so long as I can stop running NAT so my test VMs can pull from github when everything else they do runs over v6... (actually buildbot doesn't work over v6 only either).

Sami_Lehtinen 13y ago

It has happaned earlier for other regions (RIPE & APNIC) and nobody really cared about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion#Exhaustion_dates_and_impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion#Exhaus...

davidw 13y ago

Economics being the study of scarce resources, this is basically something that should be viewed through that lens. As the good becomes more scarce, it stands to reason that the price will go up and 1) encourage people to use them more efficiently, and 2) encourage people to look at alternatives like ipv6. It's probably a bit more complex in some ways, but I think the basic logic makes sense.

InTheSwiss 13y ago

I worked at Xerox for 8 years as a Solution Architect and it annoyed me so damn much that they are sitting on 13.* yet hardly using it and I can't imagine that has changed in the few years since I left. From what I can remember they were using less than 20% of the address space they have. Then again running out of v4 addresses is the best thing to happen really. Still it annoys me a big company can sit on so many addresses for no reason.

riobard 13y ago

What about adopting a subscription model? Let's say $10/IP/year. We are already doing this for an effectively infinite name space (domain names). The very limited IPv4 name space should be more expensive, right?

jlgaddis 13y ago
There actually is one, although it's a bit cheaper than that: See, e.g., https://www.arin.net/fees/fee_schedule.html https://www.arin.net/fees/fee_schedule.html

exabrial 13y ago

Not a big fan of ipv6... It did nothing to solve the global routing table size problem (in fact it made the problem much much worse). As a small network administrator, it adds nothing but headaches and will not increase the profitability of the company in any way. The only incentive right now is doomsday predictions and honestly there are better things to worry about. I'm hoping ipv6 gets an update and they design a more realistically usable protocol that offers advantages to the little guys.

jlgaddis 13y ago
> It did nothing to solve the global routing table size problem Well, at the time it was designed there was no "global routing table size problem".
- exabrial 13y ago
  Good point actually... The problem is the "Global Routing table size problem" is a problem we actually have _right meow_, whereas the impending omg-out-of-ipv4-address problems is one that will stretch on for another 40+ years. If IPv6 actually solved the problem we have right now, people would adopt it. But IPv6 solves no current problems, it only creates new current problems. Anyway, I know IETF pisses vinegar all over NAT, but I'm hoping a grassroots effort pops up to solve the problem IPv6 should have actually solved. All we really need is forward-compatible extension to IPv4 that allows for easier incoming NAT traversal. A working solution would allow border routers to identify traffic belonging to an individual host on their network (in the private address space), while the client remains blissfully happy on traditional IPv4. The goal would be, merely update your border router to speak this extension to IPv4... rather than every device on your network and oh by the way, rewrite half the software you have that parses ipv4 addresses.
  - zanny 13y ago
    Currently I have to jump hoops through some bullcrap NAT maze of a public Internet to interact with anyone else. Properly distributed ipv6 addresses would fix that. So it does solve a problem I have now, in that I'd rather just tell people to click the accept connection button when I generate inbound traffic on their ipv6 address than to get them to figure out how to port forward off a router they have never touched the interface of before.

iptrading 13y ago

We have been brokering IPv4 addresses for many years, we brokered half the bids for the watershed sale of 660,000 addresses from Nortel to Microsoft in 2011. Because of the inter-regional transfers allowed between ARIN and APNIC, we consider that a single market. ARIN/APNIC prices are right around $8US per address. RIPE has no inter-regional transfer policy, and prices in RIPE are around $10US per address. Leasing of space is also available.

ldng 13y ago

IMHO, nothing is going to happen upon IPv4 exhaustion. IPv4 will become a luxury good whose price will rise quickly. Which leads me to wonder if the Internet at large isn't at a crossroad. Either IPv6 and Net Neutrality are adopted or a market (and a black market ?) is created for IPv4. Add to that the end of net neutrality and we'll enjoy the return of Compuserve/AOL and the demise of small independent entrepreneurship on the internet because of the higher cost of entry. Granted, it's worst case scenario, yet not impossible.