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How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

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Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#51

Post by chatmasta »

djrogers wrote: post #48
chatmasta wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand what you're suggesting, this is basically how NAT64 [0] works to provide backwards compatibility to IPv6 (tunneling IPv4 over IPv6). It uses the first 32 bytes of the IPv6 address to store the IPv4 value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAT64

Pedantic comment here, but NAT64 doesn’t involve any tunneling - it’s pure address translation handled by an edge box, whereas tunneling involves encapsulation.

True, I should have been more precise.

Although there is technically no packet-level encapsulation, from a mathematical perspective you may consider the IPv4 bits "encapsulated" within the IPv6 bits.

Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#52

Post by ekns »

> The ultimate solution to IPv4 exhaustion is, of course, the complete transition of the Internet to IPv6, however, this will take time and until then there will be (by definition) networks and sites which only support IPv4.

Off-topic: I've always wondered why English speakers (or perhaps just Americans?) use "by definition" arguments so much (also just saying that things are by definition so and so).

People never seem to use "by definition" arguments and such in Finnish for example.

Definitions of mathematical objects aside, things in concept space are not eternal and can shift around. Is the usage a cultural thing? A quirk of language? Just some random trivial thing that just is and doesn't have any particular reason to it? :p

Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#53

Post by cornholio »

I think search engines are very well positioned to massively help IPv6 addoption. For example, they could limit the number of search hits to an IPv4 only site. A mom an pop page without IPv6 is fine, a top 1000 site is inexcusable in 2018 and contributing to the vicious circle.

On the user facing side, they could inform consumers when they are connecting from IPv4 only networks, to realy drive home the point that they are receiving a sub-par service. It might not be true today, but in the long run it's true for the internet as a whole, stuck in IPv4. And if people perceive IPv6 as desirable, they will prefer it given the choice even if they don't understand exactly what it is, just like they prefer a 4G service to a 3G one.

What incentive would Google and Microsoft have to do this? IPv4 exhaustion costs them too, in routing performance and manpower to manage a scarce resource. Also, reliable end to end connectivity is an enabler for the type of technologies they push, limiting telco control over their users. Massive growth markets are trumped by lack of IP space, the whole of Afrinic only has a few /8. That means African carriers will do massive NAT.

Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#54

Post by tscs37 »

overcast wrote: post #33
FooBarWidget wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. IPv6 is ugly, yeah, but not any more ugly than other long random strings that we just copy-paste all the time, like API keys. For me, not adopting IPv6 has these reasons: * My home and small business Internet provider does not support IPv6, despite them talking about deploying it for about 10 years now. Actually here in the Netherlands I have never encountered a mainstream consumer ISP that supports IPv…

You go ahead, and try relaying an IPv6 address over the phone from one of your end users.

That's why you need a solid solution for DNS, though from my experience, mDNS does a decent enough job to solve it.

Instead of the numbers you type in the hostname of a device. IPv6 encourages to improve on the current lackluster DNS solutions some routers have.

Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#55

Post by ymse »

I've been dreaming of a small-scale "cloud" hosting startup, and one of the biggest concerns is actually IPv4 availability.

I was hoping that this article would shed some light on the feasibility for a new company to grab a /20 or so. Does anyone around here have some insight?

Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#56

Post by gwbas1c »

mgkimsal wrote: post #50
gwbas1c wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I work with HTTP APIs, IPv6 appears rather transparent. I just stick in a URL and it works. But, you're right about IPv6 being extremely complicated. Back when I first heard about IPv6, I suspected it was going to fail in the marketplace.

the 'dotted quad' format was 'good enough' from a UI perspective (and... fitting in peoples' brains for short term). had we added one or two more spaces - and default all existing addresses to 0.0.x.x.x.x, we'd have had 65000 more blocks of 4 gig spaces. That should have been enough for most countries to have allocated enough space, while making the transition and UI upgrades pretty painless. If there's only a x.x.x.…

> As all the pieces fall in to place - hardware, ISP, OS, web/mail/services - it'll still be a gradual move, unless some major players announce IPv6 only service. If Office365 was "IPv6 only in 2020", that might motivate a lot of orgs to push their IT/ISP to upgrade and migrate.

It doesn't even need to be that drastic. Apple, Google, and Microsoft could just check for IPv6 when connecting to a network. If it's missing, display some kind of alert saying, "This internet connection is malfunctioning, please contact (lookup service number based on the IP address.)"

Constantly showing that nag will put a lot of pressure on major ISPs like Comcast.

Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#57

Post by YouKnowBetter »

From a corporate perspective: we are just scared shitless to implement v6 internally.

Keeping (private) v4 working is hard enough.

Even drafting a project budget for v6 makes management go balistic. - firewall & IDS upgrades

- firewalls rules

- accountablity

- dynamic DNS

- employee education

- toolchain updates

- upgrades of software

- functionality tests

Not all companies employ NY or Google level engineers who "just roll out v6" on a Sunday afternoon.

Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#58

Post by pas »

geofft wrote: post #20
XorNot wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds more like poor DHCP configuration on your side? DHCP going down doesn't remove anything unless your client decides to time out it's current address configuration - of which there's no incentive to do on a server. Moreover if routing was being propagated by DHCP, why was that not the case for IPv4 as well which would presumably be using it ?

DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 are different (they even run on different ports) and probably they have more experience with monitoring and operating DHCPv4. Honestly I think the fundamental mistake of IPv6 was trying to fix everything else along the way. Certainly there are things that can be fixed in DHCPv4. But there isn't a way to put off that operational work until you're ready to get good at it; there is no way to just get m…

What was the problem with ARP anyway? Why Neighbor Discovery is better?

Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#59

Post by jimmies »

IPv4 exhaustion is going to get really bad if we don't move to IPv6 soon.

IPv4 exhaustion means no more personal server boxes at home. The US has huge chunks of IPv4 allocation. In Vietnam, it's not as fun. IPv4 addresses have really exhausted. I just learned by accident that the ISP there they do a thing called the "carrier grade NAT" to get around that.

I was baffled I couldn't open a port on my router to seed some Linux images despite setting up the NAT correctly (remotely). After scratching my head for a while I noticed the IP address that the router reported was not the public IP when I Googled "what is my IP address." Then I sent an email to FPT, the ISP - one of the biggest ISPs in Vietnam saying "Hey guys - I believe I'm behind a NAT... I can't open a port to do stuff. Can you assist me?" To my surprise, after 15 minutes they sent an email back, saying "Oh yeah, we know that, we have given you a public IP. Thanks for trusting our service." I was double baffled by their service. Then because of that, I also asked for IPv6. 10 minutes later - "IPv6 has been enabled on your account. Thanks for using our service." What the hell?

While my ISP in the US (Spectrum/TW) has just given me a hell of a hard time because they sent me a buggy modem that would restart 3+ times a day. And in 4 months with a countless number of calls, 10 tech people sent to my house, no one knew what TF was going on. Now suddenly, it doesn't crash anymore, but they disabled IPv6 altogether, no words given. No one in their tech support knew that IPv6 was disabled because it crashes their router and they just gave me bullshit answers. I just found out about the "Puma chipset IPv6 crash" ordeal by Googling. Again, Spectrum was as helpful as a rock. I don't know how do they have so many people sending me mail spams weekly and calling and harassing me to sign up for their TV service, yet the service sucks so much.

Re: How bad is IPv4 address exhaustion?

#60

Post by AckermanMD »

Could IPv4 address exhaustion be staved by opening some of the currently unused /8 blocks? For instance, Apple has the entire 17.0.0.0/8 block. If IPv4 addresses are really becoming scarce and demand is going up, seems like Apple could dole out /24 or /16 bit blocks to RIRs and make some money - which they obviously like to do. So why aren't they doing it? Maybe someone more familiar with the economics of IP has an idea.
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