Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IP addresses through 2024

potaroo.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 90 posts

Re: IP addresses through 2024

#31

Post by kalaksi »

nottorp wrote: post #26
mike_d wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get caught up in how many IPv6 addresses exist, as if we will always have enough to go around. Recently Capital One was assigned a /16, enough for every ATM in the US to be its own ISP and make its own customer allocations. We continue to repeat the same mistakes that made people believe we needed v6 in the first place. We will never run out of IPv6, but I believe in my lifetime you won't be able to get new v6…

> Recently Capital One was assigned a /16 So besides the bad design ipv6 is also badly managed?

Wait until you see IPv4

Re: IP addresses through 2024

#32

Post by forty »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #13

Interesting to see how apparently low deployment of IP v6 we have achieved in Sweden. I wonder why.

There seem to be some correlation between large population size and higher deployment. Maybe there are too few internet connections to be really worth it.

Re: IP addresses through 2024

#33

Post by cesarb »

mike_d wrote: post #11
ironhaven wrote: post #7

I feel like this blog does not accurately describe how large the ipv6 address space even after accounting for it being reduced by 2^64 for the host portion of the address. If it did it would make the concerned comments about /28 ipv6 network sizes seem very misplaced. A single static ipv4 address is a /32 slice into the ipv4 space and is considered a reasonable to size give out to a single person or even a small busi…

People get caught up in how many IPv6 addresses exist, as if we will always have enough to go around. Recently Capital One was assigned a /16, enough for every ATM in the US to be its own ISP and make its own customer allocations. We continue to repeat the same mistakes that made people believe we needed v6 in the first place. We will never run out of IPv6, but I believe in my lifetime you won't be able to get new v6…

> We continue to repeat the same mistakes that made people believe we needed v6 in the first place.

The IPv6 designers already thought of that and prepared for that eventuality. Only 1/8 of all available IPv6 addresses (the ones starting with the bits 001) is available for allocation under the current rules. If and when that gets exhausted, there will still be more than 5/8 of all IPv6 addresses available to be allocated under more strict rules. (See https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-space/ipv6-add... and https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3513.html#section-4 for more details.)

Re: IP addresses through 2024

#34

Post by tsimionescu »

ironhaven wrote: post #7

I feel like this blog does not accurately describe how large the ipv6 address space even after accounting for it being reduced by 2^64 for the host portion of the address. If it did it would make the concerned comments about /28 ipv6 network sizes seem very misplaced. A single static ipv4 address is a /32 slice into the ipv4 space and is considered a reasonable to size give out to a single person or even a small busi…

The thing is, there are just as many /28 IPv6 ranges as /28 IPv4 ranges. And the experience with IPv4 is that it's those larger ranges that we've run out of the quickest. The whole power of IPv6 is that assigning a huge global business a /32 gives them enough addresses to run more devices that exist on the whole Internet today. But if we're distributing large swaths of IPv6, we'll run out just the same, unless we try to later claw them back like we did with some IPv4 /8 spaces.

Now, of course, a /28 in IPv4 is a tiny range, while a /28 in IPv6 is huge. And there are, of course, a lot of /28s. The fear is only that we may start seeing larger and larger allocations for no good reason whatsoever. Apparently already some random private company (Capital One) has received a /16 IPv6 range - this is an absurd allocation that should simply not be allowed if we don't want to have to move to a new IP version in a few decades.

Re: IP addresses through 2024

#35

Post by timewizard »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #20
ahsteele wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really hard to even comprehend how large IPv6 is. I have found that extreme examples tend to help people get there. Here are some I’ve used in the past. There are enough IPv6 Addresses for 4.77 x 10^28 for every living person. If each IPv6 address was a grain of sand… That’s 2.39 × 10^18 of addresses per person, or roughly enough sand sized addresses to equal about 1.8 times the volume of earths ocean per person…

I think it's more useful to comprehend it as 64+64 though. We can give every person a million local networks, with unlimited devices on each local network. That's more accurate and also easy to think about.

In current practice it's more like a global 61+64. We're all inside the globally routable /3 with ULAs on the side.

Re: IP addresses through 2024

#36

Post by timewizard »

wmf wrote: post #14
mike_d wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is when Amazon stopped pouring money into buying up as much IPv4 as possible and the market returned to demand based pricing.

Is Amazon not demand? Do they exist outside economics? (Legally they're supposed to use those addresses within a year(?) of buying them, but I won't pretend that anyone would really notice whether that's the case or not.)

There is an hourly fee for IPv4s now. There was not before.

Re: IP addresses through 2024

#37

Post by gorgoiler »

gorgoiler wrote: post #25
ahsteele wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really hard to even comprehend how large IPv6 is. I have found that extreme examples tend to help people get there. Here are some I’ve used in the past. There are enough IPv6 Addresses for 4.77 x 10^28 for every living person. If each IPv6 address was a grain of sand… That’s 2.39 × 10^18 of addresses per person, or roughly enough sand sized addresses to equal about 1.8 times the volume of earths ocean per person…

Chess has 1e100 possible games but the more practical metric is that the average game involves 40 black moves and 40 white moves. Similarly, it’s better to think of the depth of a network’s topology. The size of the tree when full is immaterial, especially when the last 64 bits is intended to be so sparse that random address assignment is viable.

I missed the edit deadline and wanted to add:

So instead of talking about there being 2^128 addresses, it’s more useful to talk about there being 4k global regions (/12 RIRs), assigning /32s to ISPs in their region.

Each ISP can assign a /48 to each customer site, which can then subdivide into 256 buildings with 256 VLANs each (or some other balance of the these, eg 8 buildings with 64 floors each and 128 VLANs on each floor) with the hosts selecting randomly (or SLAACly) from the final 64 bits.

Some ISPs where customers are in a single dwelling will only give you a /56.

Re: IP addresses through 2024

#39

Post by dijit »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #13

Interesting to see how apparently low deployment of IP v6 we have achieved in Sweden. I wonder why.

Oh, I know why!

A combination of “getting there first” (and thus, a bunch of decaying infra that doesnt support v6- and needing it all updated) and the “free-net” thing where you can choose your ISP in some apartments.

For those not in the know: internet is usually negotiated by your entire apartment building, but some (especially the largest rental building association “MKB”) give you the choice to choose your provider.

The way it actually works is complicated, but nobody will invest in this “open networks” system, so it is stuck in time fully, and even providers (like Bahnhof) who want to give v6: can’t with that system.

It seems hard to find info on the open network stuff, I know it all from a friend working at Bahnhof, here’s at least part of it:

- https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5549139

- https://www.stadsnatsportalen.se/pages/onapi (Swedish)

- https://github.com/on-api/on-api

Re: IP addresses through 2024

#40

Post by bolognafairy »

gorgoiler wrote: post #24
mike_d wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get caught up in how many IPv6 addresses exist, as if we will always have enough to go around. Recently Capital One was assigned a /16, enough for every ATM in the US to be its own ISP and make its own customer allocations. We continue to repeat the same mistakes that made people believe we needed v6 in the first place. We will never run out of IPv6, but I believe in my lifetime you won't be able to get new v6…

A /16 is the first quarter of the network prefix. That is indeed like assigning an IPv4 /8 to General Electric in 1985 and then wondering why, 40 years later, we’re out of address space.

You’re leaning heavily on “like” here. The address spaces are different. That’s the point.
Post reply on HN