5 ms·

> I can say with some certainty that the only "calamity" we are going to see is increased use of PAT on clients, and somewhat more expensive IPv4 addresses for

> I can say with some certainty that the only "calamity" we are going to see is increased use of PAT on clients, and somewhat more expensive IPv4 addresses for those who need to act as a server. Quite the calamity if you ask me: Users have to actively ask for the permission to act as a server. And at a significant monetary cost, if I understand the constraints correctly. Sure, right now, nobody has a server at home. But if we did (and this is certainly technically possible), then centralised spying-ridden services such as Gmail, Facebook, and YouTube would be mostly useless. (Assuming peer to peer distribution, you don't need a server farm to scale.) This would also help with routing by the way, by keeping communications more local.

xorcist 11y ago
> right now, nobody has a server at home I don't think it's that uncommon (and I say that not only because I have one myself). Home routers make it trivial to add one, and NAS boxes are more common than ever. Almost every game and torrent client needs to have ports forwarded (which it a server in the network sense), and UPnP is a "feature" most people have that makes it possible to be unaware of it all.
- freehunter 11y ago
  In the US, every ISP contract I've seen says you're not allowed to run a server from your home. And when they structure your connection to have 50mbps down and 0.5mbps up, that's the enforcement.
  - hobarrera 11y ago
    And that's a pretty unenforceable contract. A lot of video-games have the host of a match actually work as a server. NAS as servers. In lots of inter-device applications, one of them works as a server. Oh, right, and Xorg.
ghshephard 11y ago
What will happen is that IPv4 addresses won't be free anymore, and you'll have to pay a surcharge. This is already happening with some providers. Also, instead of being given a /29, providers will start handing out /32s. I'm not suggesting this is a good thing, but "calamity" isn't the word that comes to mind.
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  I'm not sure you comprehend the magnitude of the disaster. Right now, many people, mostly in countries that are lacking in IPv4 allocation, do not have an internet connection. An internet connection is a public IP. If you're behind a NAT, or something like it, you don't have a public IP, therefore you are not connnected to the internet. You are connected to a private network, which forwards some of your packets to the open internet. And that server thing. No public IP, no server. Not such a big problem when you control the NAT (assuming it's in your router), and can forward some ports. But if you share the same public IP with 50 other customers, it is theoretically impossible to have more than one HTTP server for those 50 people. The practical limit, of course, is zero.
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    "Magnitude of the Disaster" is the type of hyperbole that doesn't bring clarity to the situation. I've spent the majority of my working life in the last three years happily accessing the internet, internet services, and I've always been behind a PAT device when in a hotel, serviced apartment, etc... For example, right now, in my Office in Singapore, my IP address is: 192.168.108.34. And I do all my conferences, whiteboarding, VPNs, etc.. from this office. Now - back to your scenario - You certainly can share a lot of HTTP Servers on a single IP address - a lot of the customers I've worked with do so using PAT, and, you get very used to the port number being part of the HTTP server address: I.E. http://www.acme.com:3031 http://www.acme.com:3031 In a ultra-low IP address environment, you have teams with not only IPAM (IP address Management tools), but also Port Address Management - they track who has been allocated to which port. Now - is this the best case scenario? - No, obviously not - it would be awesome to have a Static IP address, and, there are some scenarios in which I have to have a static IP address - in particular getting IPSec VPNs through PAT can be problematic, so if I want to run a VPN concentrator, I start begging and pleading to get a static IP address. But I know this is going to cost me a lot of money. And that's where I started - once we run out of IPv4 addresses, the market will just start bidding the price of them up. Right now, most ISPs in Singapore will give you a static IP address for $120/year. I expect, as they run out of IP addresses, that price will start to increase - and people who might have opted in for one at $120/year, will probably decline at $500/year - returning those IP addresses back into circulation. At the same time, if someone is sitting on a /20 that they aren't using very using very much (4,000 addresses) - and those IP addresses have $2million/year of value to other people, they will be highly incentivized to capture that value. With all that said - was it not wonderful to call Layer 42, and, within 30 seconds, be granted 2001:1868:209::/48 off of their /32 ISP range? Yes, it was. I had 65,000 networks I could play with, each of which had effectively infinite address space. Do I look forward to that the day that is universal, in which every ISP user is immediately granted a /64 without asking, and anybody with a home network gets a /56 without paperwork, and a /48 is available with just a quick, inexpensive surcharge? Yes, also looking forward to that. But - "Disaster" and "Catastrophe" doesn't capture what will happen if IPv4 takes a few extra years to get traction. The market and people's behavior will adjust.

xorcist 11y ago

> right now, nobody has a server at home I don't think it's that uncommon (and I say that not only because I have one myself). Home routers make it trivial to add one, and NAS boxes are more common than ever. Almost every game and torrent client needs to have ports forwarded (which it a server in the network sense), and UPnP is a "feature" most people have that makes it possible to be unaware of it all.

freehunter 11y ago
In the US, every ISP contract I've seen says you're not allowed to run a server from your home. And when they structure your connection to have 50mbps down and 0.5mbps up, that's the enforcement.
- hobarrera 11y ago
  And that's a pretty unenforceable contract. A lot of video-games have the host of a match actually work as a server. NAS as servers. In lots of inter-device applications, one of them works as a server. Oh, right, and Xorg.

ghshephard 11y ago

What will happen is that IPv4 addresses won't be free anymore, and you'll have to pay a surcharge. This is already happening with some providers. Also, instead of being given a /29, providers will start handing out /32s. I'm not suggesting this is a good thing, but "calamity" isn't the word that comes to mind.

loup-vaillant 11y ago
I'm not sure you comprehend the magnitude of the disaster. Right now, many people, mostly in countries that are lacking in IPv4 allocation, do not have an internet connection. An internet connection is a public IP. If you're behind a NAT, or something like it, you don't have a public IP, therefore you are not connnected to the internet. You are connected to a private network, which forwards some of your packets to the open internet. And that server thing. No public IP, no server. Not such a big problem when you control the NAT (assuming it's in your router), and can forward some ports. But if you share the same public IP with 50 other customers, it is theoretically impossible to have more than one HTTP server for those 50 people. The practical limit, of course, is zero.
- ghshephard 11y ago
  "Magnitude of the Disaster" is the type of hyperbole that doesn't bring clarity to the situation. I've spent the majority of my working life in the last three years happily accessing the internet, internet services, and I've always been behind a PAT device when in a hotel, serviced apartment, etc... For example, right now, in my Office in Singapore, my IP address is: 192.168.108.34. And I do all my conferences, whiteboarding, VPNs, etc.. from this office. Now - back to your scenario - You certainly can share a lot of HTTP Servers on a single IP address - a lot of the customers I've worked with do so using PAT, and, you get very used to the port number being part of the HTTP server address: I.E. http://www.acme.com:3031 http://www.acme.com:3031 In a ultra-low IP address environment, you have teams with not only IPAM (IP address Management tools), but also Port Address Management - they track who has been allocated to which port. Now - is this the best case scenario? - No, obviously not - it would be awesome to have a Static IP address, and, there are some scenarios in which I have to have a static IP address - in particular getting IPSec VPNs through PAT can be problematic, so if I want to run a VPN concentrator, I start begging and pleading to get a static IP address. But I know this is going to cost me a lot of money. And that's where I started - once we run out of IPv4 addresses, the market will just start bidding the price of them up. Right now, most ISPs in Singapore will give you a static IP address for $120/year. I expect, as they run out of IP addresses, that price will start to increase - and people who might have opted in for one at $120/year, will probably decline at $500/year - returning those IP addresses back into circulation. At the same time, if someone is sitting on a /20 that they aren't using very using very much (4,000 addresses) - and those IP addresses have $2million/year of value to other people, they will be highly incentivized to capture that value. With all that said - was it not wonderful to call Layer 42, and, within 30 seconds, be granted 2001:1868:209::/48 off of their /32 ISP range? Yes, it was. I had 65,000 networks I could play with, each of which had effectively infinite address space. Do I look forward to that the day that is universal, in which every ISP user is immediately granted a /64 without asking, and anybody with a home network gets a /56 without paperwork, and a /48 is available with just a quick, inexpensive surcharge? Yes, also looking forward to that. But - "Disaster" and "Catastrophe" doesn't capture what will happen if IPv4 takes a few extra years to get traction. The market and people's behavior will adjust.