U.S. Will Run Out of Internet Addresses This Summer

enough to assign an IP address to every atom on Earth.

Yeah ... someone doesn't know their math.

Mass of the Earth, ~ 6e24 kg, average mass of atoms on Earth somewhere on the order of 10^-22 or 10^-23 kg. Leaves anywhere from 10^46/47 atoms. There's not that many ip addresses with v6
 
No such thing. People have been saying this forever, but thanks to NAT it really doesn't matter.
Never heard of IPv5 though.

Yes such thing. Once they allocate the last block, that's it for new people unless they can buy chunks of ip addresses off of other people. My employer has been playing the internet game since the 80s. We have a HUGE block of ip address space. WE will not run out for quite some time. But those are not usable by other entities, and we have no intention of selling them off if we were even allowed.

NAT resolved the crowding issue. New entities could get by with less. However, it doesn't fix the global allocation and management practices and how much lifespan they had left. It doesn't make things collapse immediately, but it is the jump off point for a bunch of problems becoming things you actually deal with rather than simply being things you worry about.

You allocate the last ipV4, and the next facebook comes along? What do you do?
 
Zarathustra[H];1041601951 said:
IPV6 has an address space able to provide more IP addresses than there are atoms on planet earth. In any conceioveable future usage scenario, even if we give absolutely EVERYTHING it's own IP address, that is still a few billion billion times more IP addresses than could ever under any circumstance become useful, unless you are going to make single atom computers out of every atom on earth... :rolleyes:

But what difference does it make? AFAIK, it'd still be incompatible with devices that are only aware of IPV4.
 
But what difference does it make? AFAIK, it'd still be incompatible with devices that are only aware of IPV4.

Yeah, I'm speaking more from the perspective of use ability and human legibility.

I know there are conventions that drop out the masses of zeroes in the center, but its still an annoyance.

I liked the idea of keeping the 4 dotted groupings but making them 16 instead of 8 bits each
 
Zarathustra[H];1041605589 said:
Yeah, I'm speaking more from the perspective of use ability and human legibility.

I know there are conventions that drop out the masses of zeroes in the center, but its still an annoyance.

I liked the idea of keeping the 4 dotted groupings but making them 16 instead of 8 bits each

I guess I just don't care why we care if the average person can read it. I bet most Win/OS X users don't know their IP and don't care. That said, in Windows, the V6 IP is shown as 5x4Hex digits. Yeah there's more behind the scenes, but it's behind the scenes.

I'm not an expert, but so far, it seems much adieu about nothing.
 
Wasn't this predicted to happen in 2004?

Yep.

Organizations have been better at utilizing NAT and distributing IP addresses than anticipated though.

I'm all for keeping IPV4 as long as possible, as long as I can still get a unique WAN IP. The second ISP's try to sell internet access behind a NAT, I'm out.

I don't mind NAT's as long as I control them.
 
All I know is one of the big problems in homes is port forwarding and seeing that shit mess disappear and stop being a problem would be great. For instance say you have a family and a couple kids. You want them to be able to create and run game servers. Oops good luck with that. You have to teach them all about port forwarding, and figure out how to change ports for EACH game or service and each computer and manage who is using which ports and pretty much blindly hope those ports aren't in use by something else, or tell them you can only use little johnys computer to host a server. I would love to see a point where your ISP find addresses so cheap and plentiful that you get a whole block, then IF you want to hide them you can configure your router to do so and NAT which ever you want. But most people by default and for simplicity probably shouldn't bother. Firewalls can be shifted to the device as most computing devices have them anyway.

The ability to configure a router to hide devices or masquerade isn't going away and isn't a legitimate reason to avoid ipv6.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041605614 said:
I'm all for keeping IPV4 as long as possible, as long as I can still get a unique WAN IP. The second ISP's try to sell internet access behind a NAT, I'm out.
They can't, and they won't.

The whole point of NAT was so you could get one public facing address and re-route it to a set of privately accessible IP's.

There are currently 3 available private IP address ranges for IPv4. They are private for a reason. No one can use them except an end user. They can't be internet facing per the very definition of IPv4 and RFC1918.

They are:
10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 = 16,777,216 unique addresses
172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 = 1,048,576 unique addresses
192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 = 65,536 unique addresses

Simply put, it is theoretically possible to have 1 public facing address go to a router with 16 million IP addresses behind it. Would you want to? Hell no. Could you? Doubtful, even with the most expensive hardware on the planet. No one does anyways because its a management nightmare.

Could your ISP set up some convoluted public facing address that goes through NAT and gives you one of these private IPv4 addresses? Yes, but not legally and there would be zero point to doing so. They would just sell you an IPv6 address if they didn't have any v4's left.

All you guys who are worried about older hardware still have nothing to worry about. There is a such thing as IPv6 tunneling for a reason. Basically, if there are routers somewhere along the chain that do IPv6, you will still get to your destination.

All much ado about nothing. Still a stupid clickbait article and all of these issues have had fixes in place for years.
 
It's way more than just addressing. The IPv6 protocol does use the TCP/IP stack protocol and currently there is no way to translate IPv6 to IPv4 (or vice versa). Which is one of the main reasons why it's taking IPv6 so long to become the new standard.

Having two infrastructures on different protocols is way too expensive and there aren't enough people to switch over to justify the cost. It literally would have to come down some sort of federal regulation that IPv4 HAS to switch to IPv6 by (Let's just say) Jan 1, 2026.

There there will be A LOT of push back on that.
LOL. Wut?

I'm going to assume you left out a lot of clarifying statements and I simply misread.

If you meant it exactly as typed, then you need to read up on tunneling and encapsulation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6in4


Yes such thing. Once they allocate the last block, that's it for new people unless they can buy chunks of ip addresses off of other people. My employer has been playing the internet game since the 80s. We have a HUGE block of ip address space. WE will not run out for quite some time. But those are not usable by other entities, and we have no intention of selling them off if we were even allowed.
Correction. Once they allocate the last block of IPv4 addresses, that's it for new people wanting a public IPv4 address. It won't prohibit someone from getting one of the trillions upon trillions of IPv6 addresses.

No reason to be scared. IPv4 addresses will run out, and the only people who will actually give a fuck are those network admins that refuse to learn IPv6 or IPv6 tunneling.

Meanwhile, the internet will keep on truckin assigning trillions upon trillions of IPv6 addresses as it has for years already. Average Joe doesn't even notice because of DNS and tunneling.
 
I've been fully IPv6 for years now, honestly it is much ado about nothing. Learning IPv6 isn't all that difficult if you already know IPv4. Honestly they just need to stop stalling, pull the trigger and be done with IPv4 for anything outside private networks.
 
I've been fully IPv6 for years now, honestly it is much ado about nothing. Learning IPv6 isn't all that difficult if you already know IPv4. Honestly they just need to stop stalling, pull the trigger and be done with IPv4 for anything outside private networks.

Couldn't agree more. There are still lots of ISP-provided routers out there which only do IPv4, or which have a broken IPv6 stack.

My own ISP (UnityMedia, Germany) only provides IPv6 and IPv4-lite (tunnelling) by default. You have to beg them to give you a real IPv4 WAN address. Some customers do not like this, but the way I see it, the sooner every device on the network does IPv6, the sooner we can forget about this whole IPv4 mess. Stalling on this issue for every year since bloody 1998 isn't making anyone's life easier.

I still can't get over ISPs providing customers with routers without working IPv6, 17 years after the bloody protocol got released...
 
Couldn't agree more. There are still lots of ISP-provided routers out there which only do IPv4, or which have a broken IPv6 stack.

My own ISP (UnityMedia, Germany) only provides IPv6 and IPv4-lite (tunnelling) by default. You have to beg them to give you a real IPv4 WAN address. Some customers do not like this, but the way I see it, the sooner every device on the network does IPv6, the sooner we can forget about this whole IPv4 mess. Stalling on this issue for every year since bloody 1998 isn't making anyone's life easier.

I still can't get over ISPs providing customers with routers without working IPv6, 17 years after the bloody protocol got released...

1. people get routers from their ISP?
2. I don't think my old wrt54g tm supported IPv6 and I got it no more than 6 years ago.
 
1. people get routers from their ISP?
2. I don't think my old wrt54g tm supported IPv6 and I got it no more than 6 years ago.

Are routers even relevant in an IPv6 world? Does IPV6 even support NAT?

If you have virtually unlimited IP addresses, why even bother with NAT (I mean, I like my private net and all, but still)

That being said, yes, people get routers from their ISP's. Many ISP's force you to use their routers or you lose features (like TV EPG, on demand, IP phone, etc.).

What's worse, is they make you pay to rent it!
 
Zarathustra[H];1041606799 said:
Are routers even relevant in an IPv6 world? Does IPV6 even support NAT?

If you have virtually unlimited IP addresses, why even bother with NAT (I mean, I like my private net and all, but still)

That being said, yes, people get routers from their ISP's. Many ISP's force you to use their routers or you lose features (like TV EPG, on demand, IP phone, etc.).

What's worse, is they make you pay to rent it!

I don't know what TV EPG is and I don't get why anyone pays for an IP phone. I've got a cell phone. I can do IP Telephony from it if I want to. If you want to call me, call my cell.
 
I don't know what TV EPG is and I don't get why anyone pays for an IP phone. I've got a cell phone. I can do IP Telephony from it if I want to. If you want to call me, call my cell.

Electronic program guide. You know, you push the guide button on your remote, and it shows you what is on (and what will be on).

Now personally I don't use my ISP's router, but it took some level of ingenuity to work around that, which is outside the capability of your average user.

There are some cable ISP's that still let you use your own router without hassle, but that number is shrinking, with more and more ISP's integrating modem and router, and using the combined device to deliver TV.

If you don't subscribe to TV, and know that you can get your own docsis compatible modem and use your own router that works, but this isn't within the apparent knowledge of most people.

The way Verizon Fios does it is that there is an ONT box that is essentially a fiber to copper transducer they install in your home. On the front of it there is an Ethernet port and a Coax port.

Unless you specifically request it, the way they install it is they run coax from the ONT to the supplied router. The supplied router receives its WAN signal from one MOCA channel on the coax, and then splits its LAN side between the integrated Ethernet switch, Wifi and back out on a different MOCA channel on the same coax, which is then used by all the set top / DVR boxes do do such things as receive the electronic program guide, get on demand service or if a DVR talk to other boxes. If you have an IP telephone through them it also uses this interface, and the set top boxes do things (if you opt to have it) like flash phone ringing info on the screen, various optional home security features, etc. etc.

Now, if you are a single geek living alone and don't care about TV, the solution is easy. Plug the router of your choice into the Ethernet port on the ONT, call Verizon support and have them remotely switch the output from coax/Moca to Ethernet, and live happily ever after.

If you are living with a significant other or roommates who say things like "I don't understand why we can't just have TV like everyone else" followed by sighing and rolling their eyes, then you have a more complicated problem.

Back when I still used Verizon's set top boxes, I solved this by switching to the Ethernet output on the ONT, running Ethernet cable to the router of my choice, and then attaching a Netgear Ethernet to MOCA adapter on the LAN side to feed information back to the set top boxes and DVR so that they would work. This wound up being a little bit more complicated than it sounds, as you have to know which MOCA channel your set top boxes are on, and if encrypted (some are some aren't for some reason) you need the MOCA decryption key which can be difficult to locate). You still need the coax to run to the set top boxes and DVR though, as this is how they receive the standard TV signal.

These days I have gotten rid of the Verizon set top boxes all together. I use a Ceton 6 channel TV tuner with a cable card, which feeds a MythTV backend box (installed virtually on my VMWare ESXi server) and then have a HTPC frontend with XBMC/Kodi near each TV.

This is not perfect, as the combination of XBMC/Kodi and the MythTV plugin has some bugs, but it is pretty OK.

If I had my druthers I'd cancel TV service all together, but every time I bring it up the eye roll and sigh come out again :p

While it would be nice if we were on the same page on this topic, if TV makes her happy, she gets TV. :)
 
Zarathustra[H];1041606850 said:
Electronic program guide. You know, you push the guide button on your remote, and it shows you what is on (and what will be on).
<snip>
While it would be nice if we were on the same page on this topic, if TV makes her happy, she gets TV. :)

Seems like a dish would solve this problem ;)
 
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