10 ms·

Goodbye, IPv4 IANA Starts Allocating Final Address Blocks

125 points by danyork 12y ago

api 12y ago
There are unallocated /8's that are privately routed. A lot are controlled by the U.S. DoD. But every time they come up, the response is always "so what? use IPv6!" I generally agree. Putting those in circulation would actually be a bad thing. It would allow IPv4 to continue to zombie-walk for another couple years, maybe another decade, and in so doing to become more deeply entrenched, harming us in the long-run. IPv4 is technical debt. It's also important to consider why DoD (and some large corps too) likes to sit on these address spaces. The problem with IPv4 isn't just that there isn't a big enough address space for every device on the Internet. IPv4 also lacks enough address space to permit the easy allocation of non-conflicting private address spaces. Ask any large-scale enterprise network engineer what happens when two companies merge or want to interconnect corporate networks and both use 10.0.0.0/16 as their address space. The answer is a visit to the bottom-most circles of NAT hell where sinners are boiled in firewall port remapping rules for all eternity. Either that or one of the merging/linking entities must renumber their entire network, which is often even more painful. It really, really pains me that so many cloud providers are taking so damn long to support IPv6. Does Amazon even support it yet? I heard Digital Ocean was finally doing a limited beta. Jeez.
- joshavant 12y ago
  IPv6 is native and default at Linode.
  - chrisseaton 12y ago
    But for some reason they don't set the AAA record for the default subdomain they give each instance, or they didn't last time I tried.
- btgeekboy 12y ago
  The cloud provider problem is definitely real. I have an idea for a service that requires both IPv4 and IPv6, but Linode and Rackspace were the two I found that both support native IPv6. Otherwise, it's something involving a HE.net tunnel, which I'm not comfortable with for more than experimental use.
  - deathanatos 12y ago
    A note on Rackspace: we see about 2–3% of the VMs we allocate come with only an IPv4 address. We have no idea why — we suspect it's a bug on Rackspace's side (we allocate everything automatically, through the same code path, so it isn't us!). We currently only use the IPv4 address (I know, I know!), but it does present a bit of a problem when/if we decide to move.
    - oasisbob 12y ago
      Rackspace also doesn't support IPv6 if you use RackConnect, which is a bummer.
    - thedude75 12y ago
      Hi there! I work at Rackspace and I'd love to get our product engineers involved and review this issue for you. Would it be possible for you to email your account number and any pertinent server information (hostname/IP address/etc) to help@rackspace.com so that we can investigate? Thanks! Andy Pape Social Media Support @Racker_Andy
  - teepo 12y ago
    SoftLayer has supported IPv6 for years. All their servers have IPv6 enabled.
    - btgeekboy 12y ago
      Thanks for the info. I'd not remembered them in my search.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > It really, really pains me that so many cloud providers are taking so damn long to support IPv6. Does Amazon even support it yet? I don't work at Amazon, but I spoke with someone about this recently, and I believe the issue is that Amazon provides virtual hardware and a virtual networking stack, and the tooling required to virtualize the networking stack in IPv6 isn't mature enough yet. For providers that offer dedicated hardware, this isn't an issue, but Amazon's services abstract over a very complicated and intertwined stack, so I can understand why it would take them longer.
  - _asciiker_ 12y ago
    KimeraLive.com supports IPv6 since 2012, we have more than a few private data-base servers that have IPv6 only access. Cloud providers are not the problem, Internet Service Providers are, at home I'm stuck with IPv4 still.
- nly 12y ago
  > It really, really pains me that so many cloud providers are taking so damn long to support IPv6. Not sure about cloud providers, but several VPS companies already offer discounts for you to go IPv6 only.
fournm 12y ago
This is the recovered pool that's finally running out, so short of reclaiming something drastic like the class A block 10 (you know, a really really bad idea), dang. Anyone know what IPv6 adoption is looking like these days? Google is showing like 3% of their connections are native to it [1], which does not look promising. 1: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6...
- duskwuff 12y ago
  > …short of reclaiming something drastic like the class A block 10 (you know, a really really bad idea), dang. 10/8 is off limits, but there are a bunch of /8 blocks which could likely be reclaimed if we really needed to, including: - About half a dozen which were allocated to the US military in the early 1990s, most of which aren't even publicly advertised at all - 44/8, reserved for amateur radio - A number of other /8 blocks owned by corporations, which could potentially sell or return chunks of them if properly convinced
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/195/ http://xkcd.com/195/ Edit: I wish there was an updated version.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      What is that way of ordering numbers called? If I knew the name I could google it but that's what I'm missing.
      - tbrownaw 12y ago
        It's a variety of space-filling curve. That's enough to find out that this particular one is called a Hilbert curve.
      - Coincoin 12y ago
        It's called a Hilbert Curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve
bkeroack 12y ago
I've seen headlines like this for literally 5 years at least. "IANA finally out of IPv4 addresses", "IANA allocates last X block", etc. When will it finally be impossible to buy an IPv4 address?
- joshavant 12y ago
  It becomes more and more impossible every day. Last time I tried to acquire a new IPv4, the distributor (my VPS host) required a technical reason for the request. If the request wasn't up to par, you would be denied an IPv4 + given an IPv6.
  - eli 12y ago
    Have you ever been denied? My understanding is that hosts are required to justify usage, but that they aren't exactly scrutinizing that document.
  - leorocky 12y ago
    It's trivial to get new IP4 addresses on AWS and Rackspace. I guess it depends on the company. Microsoft's Azure does a weird thing where instances all share the same IP but are accessible via different ports when in a group.
    - aroch 12y ago
      Depends on the RIR that assigned your block. RIPE For example requires you provide a technical reason, AWS gets around this by saying that technically every instance could have an SSL certificate and thus should have it own IP for compatibility reasons. RIPE will and has reclaimed /24's and /16's from LIRs who didn't follow their guidelines (tl;dr of which is "must be a technical limitation of IP sharing")
      - justincormack 12y ago
        So they could recall most of Amazon's IPs due to lack of SSL? Fun to watch!
skrause 12y ago
So what exactly is the "IANA IPv4 Recovered Address Space"? Today's news sounds almost exactly like February 2011 when the IANA announced that it finally allocated the last remaining blocks: http://www.nro.net/news/ipv4-free-pool-depleted http://www.nro.net/news/ipv4-free-pool-depleted
- wmf 12y ago
  AFAIK some people gave space back to IANA and now even that is running out.
- kijeda 12y ago
  Here is the registry: http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-recovered-address-space http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-recovered-address-space It is space that has been surrendered to IANA for re-allocation.
- danyork 12y ago
  The announcement in Feb 2011 was that IANA had allocated the last IPv4 address blocks from the planned allocations. IANA (ICANN) and the RIRs then worked to recover some blocks of unused IPv4 addresses. These became the "recovered IPv4 pool" and the agreement was that allocations from this pool would begin once one of the RIRs reached the last /9 of their available IPv4 address space. LACNIC hit that mark and triggered ICANN's policy to start allocating out of this recovered address space pool. The NRO has an announcement up about this, too: http://www.nro.net/news/iana-allocates-recovered-ipv4-addresses-to-rirs http://www.nro.net/news/iana-allocates-recovered-ipv4-addres... Basically, after this recovered pool of IPv4 addresses is allocated by IANA, there aren't any more IPv4 addresses to give out.
TranceMan 12y ago
PDF Warning! https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/2geoff-2014-02-26-ipv6-measurement-bof_1393236812.pdf https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/2geoff-2014-02-26-ipv6-... Am on phone so not read 100%
dorfsmay 12y ago
Peak ipv4!
sneak 12y ago
It would be nice if certain websites we all use every day supported v6 better... firstmillion:~▻ host -t AAAA news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com has no AAAA record firstmillion:~▻ host -t AAAA twitter.com twitter.com has no AAAA record firstmillion:~▻ host -t AAAA cloud-images.ubuntu.com cloud-images.ubuntu.com has no AAAA record firstmillion:~▻ host -t AAAA ubuntu.com ubuntu.com has no AAAA record ...
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  It sure would be. Here's a list that does: http://www.worldipv6launch.org/participants/?q=1 http://www.worldipv6launch.org/participants/?q=1 BTW, there is a nifty Chrome extension that tells you whether the site is doing IPv4 or IPv6. Always nice to see a green 6 in the address bar.
  - mineo 12y ago
    In case anyone's interested, the Chrome extensions is IPvFoo [0], a similar one for firefox is IPvFox [1]. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipvfoo/ecanpcehffngcegjmadlcijfolapggal https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipvfoo/ecanpcehffn... [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/ipvfox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/ipvfox/
- scrollaway 12y ago
  The worst part is that most of these sites probably do have ipv6 addresses, they just didn't set up the DNS for it.
- ciupicri 12y ago
  By the way, I find it interesting that Fedora supports IPv6: $ host -t AAAA fedoraproject.org fedoraproject.org has IPv6 address 2001:4178:2:1269::fed2 fedoraproject.org has IPv6 address 2607:f188::dead:beef:cafe:fed1 fedoraproject.org has IPv6 address 2610:28:3090:3001:dead:beef:cafe:fed4 while Red Hat doesn't: $ host -t AAAA redhat.com redhat.com has no AAAA record
- rb12345 12y ago
ry0ohki 12y ago
Easy problem to solve, so many entire /8 blocks are owned by single corporations, which should either be forced to sell or give up this outdated privilege. Does Xerox really need all of 13.x.x.x? Or Ford Motor Company all of 19.x.x.x? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addres...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- quink 12y ago
  And how long will that last? And there's a presumption here that businesses with lots of IPs that got in early aren't already selling them for fun and profit. They, such as Nortel, already are.
- nknighthb 12y ago
  Between 2008 and 2010, IANA was allocating 10 /8s per year. In 2010, they allocated 20 /8s. There are only 256 total in the system, and not all of those are even usable. Rapidly-developing Asia already has about as many people as there are IP addresses by itself. Where are you going to find enough /8s, how are you going to recover them fast enough to do any good, and who's going to pay the massive legal bills from the ensuing litigation?
- smackfu 12y ago
  They probably assign static IPs in their range all the time. They just aren't publicly routable. Taking away their /8 would require a huge amount of reconfiguration work, so not sure what the motive would be, until the prices get really high.
IgorPartola 12y ago
So there is a lot of sentiment that I've been hearing over time about when exactly will IPv6 become a thing. Here's how I see it: Step -1: We started running out of IPv4 addresses. The internet is IPv4-only for all practical purposes. Nobody is doing IPv6 because it's still experimental. Your weird neck-bearded friends are talking about it, that's about it. Step 0: Inception! IPv6 is now a standard and you can route IPv6 over the tubes. Two networks have connected! Step 1: Dual stack is a thing. Now you can set up both IPv4 and IPv6 on the same network and they co-exist. Some hosts (goole.com, facebook.com) try this and finally turn it on for good in 2012. Step 2: Dual stack intensifies. This is where we are now. You cannot yet run a full blown IPv6-only network that you want to talk to the Internet and do anything practical with it, but all your cleanly shaven friends are now telling you that you should support IPv6 first, then add IPv4 for compatibility. Google sees as much as 3.5% of their traffic over IPv6. Step 3: The cost of any single IPv4 address rises dramatically. For an end user it's already roughly $1/month. Buying in bulk is much cheaper, but not free like it used to be. ISP's and other service providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Digital Ocean) are going to start noticing the costs on their bottom lines. Severe restrictions are imposed by IPS's and service providers on anything but the bare minimum of IPv4 usage. Step 4: The future. The first IPv6-only networks start to pop up. They use special network translation to talk to IPv4-only internet. (You can do this at home now! It's called NAT64: http://www.litech.org/tayga/ http://www.litech.org/tayga/). Step 5. The number of IPv6-only networks is growing rapidly. IPv4 is now a legacy protocol. All your friends are telling you that they cannot believe we are still using IPv4 and how much of a pain it is to support it. Sales of T-shirts with "There is no place like 127.0.0.1" drop dramatically. Step 6. The same people that put together IPv6 World Launch Day put together an IPv4 funeral. Major companies turn off IPv4 presence. The crucial point here is not that someone demands IPv6 by calling their ISP, etc. It is fun to play with and you should at least get a tunnel set up through Hurricane Electric if you are reading this, but the demand here does not matter. What matters is supply: supply of IPv4 that is. Once that goes to nil, the cost rises and some executive at every ISP and service provider has a bright idea to save the company millions by switching everyone to IPv6. That's it. We, the people in the trenches, cannot affect this. We cannot speed it up and we cannot slow it down. The invisible hand of the market will make IPv6 happen all on its own.
- 12y ago
eyeareque 12y ago
We've been saying goodbye to IPv4 for years and years. No one will care unless money is lost by not running IPv6. That is when adoption rates will go up.
hippich 12y ago
My provider (Suddenlink) support rep responded to my question about IPv6 support with "No, we do not support it since almost no one uses it currently." S
- danyork 12y ago
  Perhaps you can point them to sites like http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ and show them some of the stats on networks that are using it. You can also point them to the fact that Facebook, Netflix, Wikipedia and all of Google's sites are available over IPv6. So the "almost no one uses it" doesn't quite fly.
  - hippich 12y ago
    I am pretty sure they are well aware of that. It is just boilerplate response for reps to respond to IPv6 inquiries.
Yardlink 12y ago
Isn't IPv4 good for privacy? My IP address doesn't uniquely identify me unless you get records from my ISP. But wouldn't I be more likely to keep the same IPv6 address consistently? It also makes it hard for websites to block users based on IP without also blocking lots of legitimate users sharing that IP. I think this is a good thing to keep the internet more equal and anonymous.
- sc68cal 12y ago
  IPv6 provides temporary addresses and privacy extensions - check your operating system for support.
paulsutter 12y ago
Time to start auctioning IPv4 ranges. Is there anything in the terms that prevents such an auction? Putting a price on ranges should redistribute IPv4 ranges to those who need them. It's certainly simpler than coming up with a set of rules for usage.
- mraison 12y ago
  I have the feeling that fighting this is about as important as protecting net neutrality. I wouldn't like a world where only those who can afford to buy expensive IPv4 addresses can serve their content without any obstacles, especially when the issue would be completely solved by wider IPv6 adoption.
- zokier 12y ago
  ARIN has a policy for trading IPv4: https://www.arin.net/resources/transfers/transfer_market.html https://www.arin.net/resources/transfers/transfer_market.htm...
StephenFalken 12y ago
Steve Reeding, one of the creators of IPv6, shares his crucial insight on how some networks adapt, survive, and impose themselves [1]: "I have a different take on that. Yes, a lot of people were dissing tunnels yesterday. I'm actually a big fan of tunnels. I think the way the IPv4 Internet was built originally was basically by tunneling over the phone system. Ignore, you know, getting leased lines, putting computers on the end, building a network with no cooperation at all from the phone company. In fact, I once saw a phone company memo that referred to the Internet as a 'hostile overlay'. You know, and we basically, you know, demolished their billing plans and everything, and built this network in spite of the desires of the carriers. And, as I see the IPv4 Internet getting more and more like the phone company, I thought one way to deploy IPv6 is basically tunnel over all that junk. Iterate the same thing again. And I gather, you know, some people, you know, who are concerned about this are looking at other ways of sort evolving the Internet, where you, you know, tunnel over HTTP or whatever you have to do to basically get over all that cruft and build a new network on top of it. So that, to me, was one possible way, you know, as the IPv4 Internet rotted the underneath. We would tunnel over it and then we would throw away the rotted bits and replace them with wires." [1] "Internet as a 'Hostile Overlay'" -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwRVNwa6nJc#t=11m07s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwRVNwa6nJc#t=11m07s
- jacquesm 12y ago
  That's a very interesting view and the closest thing that I've seen to date for a practical, workable solution to the current mess. I really like that. How are RBLs and other useful internet institutions that work on the basis of IPv4 addresses along the way with their IPv6 adoption?
  - gingerlime 12y ago
    I also wondered about this and any throttling-based protection / rate limiting based on IP. With IPv6 the address space is huge and makes blacklists far less effective (or much more memory consuming and slow, but that's something that can be resolved with things like Bloom Filters I imagine). It would take some time to adapt implementations. I speculate this gives attackers some opportunities to use old-style hacks that were largely mitigated, but suddenly re-appear with IPv6.
jacquesm 12y ago
The quickest way to gain mass adoption to IPv6 is if facebook, twitter and google+ collectively decide to disable their IPv4 and leave only IPv6 as a connection option. I figure the subsequent avalanche of user pressure on isps will solve the problem in a week or so. Added bonus: during that week productivity will be at an all time high.
dcc1 12y ago
Ive been given a static ipv4 and a big ipv6 range from my isp, problem is despite getting the latest and best router http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTN66U/ http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTN66U/ I cant get ipv6 to work with this router, tho if i connect laptop directly to the wan cable i get an ipv6 address without issues and can use google via ipv6 etc If a slightly unshaven geek like me cant get ipv6 to work easily what hope is there for rest of the world :(
eknkc 12y ago
It feels like I've been reading this exact headline once a week for a couple of years.. I started to believe that there is an infinite reserve of ipv4 blocks and we'll be just fine.
blueskin_ 12y ago
Meanwhile, most ISPs have done sod all about IPv6 and will probably only start when they start getting complaints from users that foo site doesn't work.

125 points by danyork 12y ago

api 12y ago

There are unallocated /8's that are privately routed. A lot are controlled by the U.S. DoD. But every time they come up, the response is always "so what? use IPv6!" I generally agree. Putting those in circulation would actually be a bad thing. It would allow IPv4 to continue to zombie-walk for another couple years, maybe another decade, and in so doing to become more deeply entrenched, harming us in the long-run. IPv4 is technical debt. It's also important to consider why DoD (and some large corps too) likes to sit on these address spaces. The problem with IPv4 isn't just that there isn't a big enough address space for every device on the Internet. IPv4 also lacks enough address space to permit the easy allocation of non-conflicting private address spaces. Ask any large-scale enterprise network engineer what happens when two companies merge or want to interconnect corporate networks and both use 10.0.0.0/16 as their address space. The answer is a visit to the bottom-most circles of NAT hell where sinners are boiled in firewall port remapping rules for all eternity. Either that or one of the merging/linking entities must renumber their entire network, which is often even more painful. It really, really pains me that so many cloud providers are taking so damn long to support IPv6. Does Amazon even support it yet? I heard Digital Ocean was finally doing a limited beta. Jeez.

joshavant 12y ago
IPv6 is native and default at Linode.
- chrisseaton 12y ago
  But for some reason they don't set the AAA record for the default subdomain they give each instance, or they didn't last time I tried.
btgeekboy 12y ago
The cloud provider problem is definitely real. I have an idea for a service that requires both IPv4 and IPv6, but Linode and Rackspace were the two I found that both support native IPv6. Otherwise, it's something involving a HE.net tunnel, which I'm not comfortable with for more than experimental use.
- deathanatos 12y ago
  A note on Rackspace: we see about 2–3% of the VMs we allocate come with only an IPv4 address. We have no idea why — we suspect it's a bug on Rackspace's side (we allocate everything automatically, through the same code path, so it isn't us!). We currently only use the IPv4 address (I know, I know!), but it does present a bit of a problem when/if we decide to move.
  - oasisbob 12y ago
    Rackspace also doesn't support IPv6 if you use RackConnect, which is a bummer.
  - thedude75 12y ago
    Hi there! I work at Rackspace and I'd love to get our product engineers involved and review this issue for you. Would it be possible for you to email your account number and any pertinent server information (hostname/IP address/etc) to help@rackspace.com so that we can investigate? Thanks! Andy Pape Social Media Support @Racker_Andy
- teepo 12y ago
  SoftLayer has supported IPv6 for years. All their servers have IPv6 enabled.
  - btgeekboy 12y ago
    Thanks for the info. I'd not remembered them in my search.
chimeracoder 12y ago
> It really, really pains me that so many cloud providers are taking so damn long to support IPv6. Does Amazon even support it yet? I don't work at Amazon, but I spoke with someone about this recently, and I believe the issue is that Amazon provides virtual hardware and a virtual networking stack, and the tooling required to virtualize the networking stack in IPv6 isn't mature enough yet. For providers that offer dedicated hardware, this isn't an issue, but Amazon's services abstract over a very complicated and intertwined stack, so I can understand why it would take them longer.
- _asciiker_ 12y ago
  KimeraLive.com supports IPv6 since 2012, we have more than a few private data-base servers that have IPv6 only access. Cloud providers are not the problem, Internet Service Providers are, at home I'm stuck with IPv4 still.
nly 12y ago
> It really, really pains me that so many cloud providers are taking so damn long to support IPv6. Not sure about cloud providers, but several VPS companies already offer discounts for you to go IPv6 only.

fournm 12y ago

This is the recovered pool that's finally running out, so short of reclaiming something drastic like the class A block 10 (you know, a really really bad idea), dang. Anyone know what IPv6 adoption is looking like these days? Google is showing like 3% of their connections are native to it [1], which does not look promising. 1: https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6-adoption https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=ipv6...

duskwuff 12y ago
> …short of reclaiming something drastic like the class A block 10 (you know, a really really bad idea), dang. 10/8 is off limits, but there are a bunch of /8 blocks which could likely be reclaimed if we really needed to, including: - About half a dozen which were allocated to the US military in the early 1990s, most of which aren't even publicly advertised at all - 44/8, reserved for amateur radio - A number of other /8 blocks owned by corporations, which could potentially sell or return chunks of them if properly convinced
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/195/ http://xkcd.com/195/ Edit: I wish there was an updated version.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    What is that way of ordering numbers called? If I knew the name I could google it but that's what I'm missing.
    - tbrownaw 12y ago
      It's a variety of space-filling curve. That's enough to find out that this particular one is called a Hilbert curve.
    - Coincoin 12y ago
      It's called a Hilbert Curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve

bkeroack 12y ago

I've seen headlines like this for literally 5 years at least. "IANA finally out of IPv4 addresses", "IANA allocates last X block", etc. When will it finally be impossible to buy an IPv4 address?

joshavant 12y ago
It becomes more and more impossible every day. Last time I tried to acquire a new IPv4, the distributor (my VPS host) required a technical reason for the request. If the request wasn't up to par, you would be denied an IPv4 + given an IPv6.
- eli 12y ago
  Have you ever been denied? My understanding is that hosts are required to justify usage, but that they aren't exactly scrutinizing that document.
- leorocky 12y ago
  It's trivial to get new IP4 addresses on AWS and Rackspace. I guess it depends on the company. Microsoft's Azure does a weird thing where instances all share the same IP but are accessible via different ports when in a group.
  - aroch 12y ago
    Depends on the RIR that assigned your block. RIPE For example requires you provide a technical reason, AWS gets around this by saying that technically every instance could have an SSL certificate and thus should have it own IP for compatibility reasons. RIPE will and has reclaimed /24's and /16's from LIRs who didn't follow their guidelines (tl;dr of which is "must be a technical limitation of IP sharing")
    - justincormack 12y ago
      So they could recall most of Amazon's IPs due to lack of SSL? Fun to watch!

skrause 12y ago

So what exactly is the "IANA IPv4 Recovered Address Space"? Today's news sounds almost exactly like February 2011 when the IANA announced that it finally allocated the last remaining blocks: http://www.nro.net/news/ipv4-free-pool-depleted http://www.nro.net/news/ipv4-free-pool-depleted

wmf 12y ago
AFAIK some people gave space back to IANA and now even that is running out.
kijeda 12y ago
Here is the registry: http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-recovered-address-space http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-recovered-address-space It is space that has been surrendered to IANA for re-allocation.
danyork 12y ago
The announcement in Feb 2011 was that IANA had allocated the last IPv4 address blocks from the planned allocations. IANA (ICANN) and the RIRs then worked to recover some blocks of unused IPv4 addresses. These became the "recovered IPv4 pool" and the agreement was that allocations from this pool would begin once one of the RIRs reached the last /9 of their available IPv4 address space. LACNIC hit that mark and triggered ICANN's policy to start allocating out of this recovered address space pool. The NRO has an announcement up about this, too: http://www.nro.net/news/iana-allocates-recovered-ipv4-addresses-to-rirs http://www.nro.net/news/iana-allocates-recovered-ipv4-addres... Basically, after this recovered pool of IPv4 addresses is allocated by IANA, there aren't any more IPv4 addresses to give out.

TranceMan 12y ago

PDF Warning! https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/2geoff-2014-02-26-ipv6-measurement-bof_1393236812.pdf https://conference.apnic.net/data/37/2geoff-2014-02-26-ipv6-... Am on phone so not read 100%

dorfsmay 12y ago

Peak ipv4!

sneak 12y ago

It would be nice if certain websites we all use every day supported v6 better... firstmillion:~▻ host -t AAAA news.ycombinator.com news.ycombinator.com has no AAAA record firstmillion:~▻ host -t AAAA twitter.com twitter.com has no AAAA record firstmillion:~▻ host -t AAAA cloud-images.ubuntu.com cloud-images.ubuntu.com has no AAAA record firstmillion:~▻ host -t AAAA ubuntu.com ubuntu.com has no AAAA record ...

IgorPartola 12y ago
It sure would be. Here's a list that does: http://www.worldipv6launch.org/participants/?q=1 http://www.worldipv6launch.org/participants/?q=1 BTW, there is a nifty Chrome extension that tells you whether the site is doing IPv4 or IPv6. Always nice to see a green 6 in the address bar.
- mineo 12y ago
  In case anyone's interested, the Chrome extensions is IPvFoo [0], a similar one for firefox is IPvFox [1]. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipvfoo/ecanpcehffngcegjmadlcijfolapggal https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ipvfoo/ecanpcehffn... [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/ipvfox/ https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/ipvfox/
scrollaway 12y ago
The worst part is that most of these sites probably do have ipv6 addresses, they just didn't set up the DNS for it.
ciupicri 12y ago
By the way, I find it interesting that Fedora supports IPv6: $ host -t AAAA fedoraproject.org fedoraproject.org has IPv6 address 2001:4178:2:1269::fed2 fedoraproject.org has IPv6 address 2607:f188::dead:beef:cafe:fed1 fedoraproject.org has IPv6 address 2610:28:3090:3001:dead:beef:cafe:fed4 while Red Hat doesn't: $ host -t AAAA redhat.com redhat.com has no AAAA record
rb12345 12y ago

ry0ohki 12y ago

Easy problem to solve, so many entire /8 blocks are owned by single corporations, which should either be forced to sell or give up this outdated privilege. Does Xerox really need all of 13.x.x.x? Or Ford Motor Company all of 19.x.x.x? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_addres...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
quink 12y ago
And how long will that last? And there's a presumption here that businesses with lots of IPs that got in early aren't already selling them for fun and profit. They, such as Nortel, already are.
nknighthb 12y ago
Between 2008 and 2010, IANA was allocating 10 /8s per year. In 2010, they allocated 20 /8s. There are only 256 total in the system, and not all of those are even usable. Rapidly-developing Asia already has about as many people as there are IP addresses by itself. Where are you going to find enough /8s, how are you going to recover them fast enough to do any good, and who's going to pay the massive legal bills from the ensuing litigation?
smackfu 12y ago
They probably assign static IPs in their range all the time. They just aren't publicly routable. Taking away their /8 would require a huge amount of reconfiguration work, so not sure what the motive would be, until the prices get really high.

IgorPartola 12y ago

So there is a lot of sentiment that I've been hearing over time about when exactly will IPv6 become a thing. Here's how I see it: Step -1: We started running out of IPv4 addresses. The internet is IPv4-only for all practical purposes. Nobody is doing IPv6 because it's still experimental. Your weird neck-bearded friends are talking about it, that's about it. Step 0: Inception! IPv6 is now a standard and you can route IPv6 over the tubes. Two networks have connected! Step 1: Dual stack is a thing. Now you can set up both IPv4 and IPv6 on the same network and they co-exist. Some hosts (goole.com, facebook.com) try this and finally turn it on for good in 2012. Step 2: Dual stack intensifies. This is where we are now. You cannot yet run a full blown IPv6-only network that you want to talk to the Internet and do anything practical with it, but all your cleanly shaven friends are now telling you that you should support IPv6 first, then add IPv4 for compatibility. Google sees as much as 3.5% of their traffic over IPv6. Step 3: The cost of any single IPv4 address rises dramatically. For an end user it's already roughly $1/month. Buying in bulk is much cheaper, but not free like it used to be. ISP's and other service providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Digital Ocean) are going to start noticing the costs on their bottom lines. Severe restrictions are imposed by IPS's and service providers on anything but the bare minimum of IPv4 usage. Step 4: The future. The first IPv6-only networks start to pop up. They use special network translation to talk to IPv4-only internet. (You can do this at home now! It's called NAT64: http://www.litech.org/tayga/ http://www.litech.org/tayga/). Step 5. The number of IPv6-only networks is growing rapidly. IPv4 is now a legacy protocol. All your friends are telling you that they cannot believe we are still using IPv4 and how much of a pain it is to support it. Sales of T-shirts with "There is no place like 127.0.0.1" drop dramatically. Step 6. The same people that put together IPv6 World Launch Day put together an IPv4 funeral. Major companies turn off IPv4 presence. The crucial point here is not that someone demands IPv6 by calling their ISP, etc. It is fun to play with and you should at least get a tunnel set up through Hurricane Electric if you are reading this, but the demand here does not matter. What matters is supply: supply of IPv4 that is. Once that goes to nil, the cost rises and some executive at every ISP and service provider has a bright idea to save the company millions by switching everyone to IPv6. That's it. We, the people in the trenches, cannot affect this. We cannot speed it up and we cannot slow it down. The invisible hand of the market will make IPv6 happen all on its own.

12y ago

eyeareque 12y ago

We've been saying goodbye to IPv4 for years and years. No one will care unless money is lost by not running IPv6. That is when adoption rates will go up.

hippich 12y ago

My provider (Suddenlink) support rep responded to my question about IPv6 support with "No, we do not support it since almost no one uses it currently." S

danyork 12y ago
Perhaps you can point them to sites like http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ and show them some of the stats on networks that are using it. You can also point them to the fact that Facebook, Netflix, Wikipedia and all of Google's sites are available over IPv6. So the "almost no one uses it" doesn't quite fly.
- hippich 12y ago
  I am pretty sure they are well aware of that. It is just boilerplate response for reps to respond to IPv6 inquiries.

Yardlink 12y ago

Isn't IPv4 good for privacy? My IP address doesn't uniquely identify me unless you get records from my ISP. But wouldn't I be more likely to keep the same IPv6 address consistently? It also makes it hard for websites to block users based on IP without also blocking lots of legitimate users sharing that IP. I think this is a good thing to keep the internet more equal and anonymous.

sc68cal 12y ago
IPv6 provides temporary addresses and privacy extensions - check your operating system for support.

paulsutter 12y ago

Time to start auctioning IPv4 ranges. Is there anything in the terms that prevents such an auction? Putting a price on ranges should redistribute IPv4 ranges to those who need them. It's certainly simpler than coming up with a set of rules for usage.

mraison 12y ago
I have the feeling that fighting this is about as important as protecting net neutrality. I wouldn't like a world where only those who can afford to buy expensive IPv4 addresses can serve their content without any obstacles, especially when the issue would be completely solved by wider IPv6 adoption.
zokier 12y ago
ARIN has a policy for trading IPv4: https://www.arin.net/resources/transfers/transfer_market.html https://www.arin.net/resources/transfers/transfer_market.htm...

StephenFalken 12y ago

Steve Reeding, one of the creators of IPv6, shares his crucial insight on how some networks adapt, survive, and impose themselves [1]: "I have a different take on that. Yes, a lot of people were dissing tunnels yesterday. I'm actually a big fan of tunnels. I think the way the IPv4 Internet was built originally was basically by tunneling over the phone system. Ignore, you know, getting leased lines, putting computers on the end, building a network with no cooperation at all from the phone company. In fact, I once saw a phone company memo that referred to the Internet as a 'hostile overlay'. You know, and we basically, you know, demolished their billing plans and everything, and built this network in spite of the desires of the carriers. And, as I see the IPv4 Internet getting more and more like the phone company, I thought one way to deploy IPv6 is basically tunnel over all that junk. Iterate the same thing again. And I gather, you know, some people, you know, who are concerned about this are looking at other ways of sort evolving the Internet, where you, you know, tunnel over HTTP or whatever you have to do to basically get over all that cruft and build a new network on top of it. So that, to me, was one possible way, you know, as the IPv4 Internet rotted the underneath. We would tunnel over it and then we would throw away the rotted bits and replace them with wires." [1] "Internet as a 'Hostile Overlay'" -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwRVNwa6nJc#t=11m07s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwRVNwa6nJc#t=11m07s

jacquesm 12y ago
That's a very interesting view and the closest thing that I've seen to date for a practical, workable solution to the current mess. I really like that. How are RBLs and other useful internet institutions that work on the basis of IPv4 addresses along the way with their IPv6 adoption?
- gingerlime 12y ago
  I also wondered about this and any throttling-based protection / rate limiting based on IP. With IPv6 the address space is huge and makes blacklists far less effective (or much more memory consuming and slow, but that's something that can be resolved with things like Bloom Filters I imagine). It would take some time to adapt implementations. I speculate this gives attackers some opportunities to use old-style hacks that were largely mitigated, but suddenly re-appear with IPv6.

jacquesm 12y ago

The quickest way to gain mass adoption to IPv6 is if facebook, twitter and google+ collectively decide to disable their IPv4 and leave only IPv6 as a connection option. I figure the subsequent avalanche of user pressure on isps will solve the problem in a week or so. Added bonus: during that week productivity will be at an all time high.

dcc1 12y ago

Ive been given a static ipv4 and a big ipv6 range from my isp, problem is despite getting the latest and best router http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTN66U/ http://www.asus.com/Networking/RTN66U/ I cant get ipv6 to work with this router, tho if i connect laptop directly to the wan cable i get an ipv6 address without issues and can use google via ipv6 etc If a slightly unshaven geek like me cant get ipv6 to work easily what hope is there for rest of the world :(

eknkc 12y ago

It feels like I've been reading this exact headline once a week for a couple of years.. I started to believe that there is an infinite reserve of ipv4 blocks and we'll be just fine.

blueskin_ 12y ago

Meanwhile, most ISPs have done sod all about IPv6 and will probably only start when they start getting complaints from users that foo site doesn't work.