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We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

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Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#51

Post by kiallmacinnes »

bigiain wrote: post #29
mfincham wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recovering additional IPv4 space at this point only prolongs the inevitable problem. The solution is IPv6.

Five (or ten) years ago, NAT was "the solution" – which helped and worked for longer than the doomsayers predicted. Today, I suspect SNI will be the important stop-gap measure. There's a whole bunch of websites out there on shared hosting with dedicated IP(v4) addresses for their vhost just so they can use SSL certs for https connections. If we can ignore Windows XP users and IE6 users, SNI allows SSL certs on shared…

> I can think of a few dozen "unnecessary" IP addresses this little web development firm consumes, I suspect big hosting companies could probably find thousands or tens of thousands of similarly used IP addresses.

That's the problem. A few million addresses would stretch things out by a couple of months.. But the cost of getting a few million websites onto SNI would far exceed any benefit.

Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#52

Post by masklinn »

ars wrote: post #4

There are a ton of /8 still assigned to companies that don't need them. Ford, GE, IBM, AT&T (x2), Xerox, HP (x2), Apple, MIT, CSC, Eli Lilly, Nortel, Prudential Insurance, DuPont, Cap Debis, Merck, SITA. All of those can return their /8. That's 18 /8 potentially available. And does the DoD really need 12 /8's? I get that they want to network every person, gun, ship, tank, truck and plane. But none of those need to be…

> There are a ton of /8 still assigned to companies that don't need them.

You've got no idea how they're structured internally. Some of those companies uses their blocks to make every machine in their network globally routable, they don't "need" them but they do use them and they're part of their network architecture.

Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#53

Post by masklinn »

swixmix wrote: post #50
recuter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of those can return their /8. That's 18 /8 potentially available. If say, Apple is using at least a little bit of that /8 here and there (safe assumption, no?) its going to be hard for them to return it. I'd wager corporations that have /8s have policies that rely on the assumption that they have the whole /8. So I wouldn't hold my breath on getting one back from them.

This could be a fortunate investment that will make them lots of money. Give it back? I doubt it. Sell it back? Profit.

> This could be a fortunate investment that will make them lots of money.

Apple has ~$150b in cash reserves. Selling a /8 would amount to nothing on their balance sheets, whereas owning a /8 can have invaluable uses.

Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#54

Post by otterley »

cbhl wrote: post #40
kazagistar wrote: post #34

Its not really so bad. Its not like end users need IP addresses. All you need is addresses for all the major servers, and then like a couple dozen for each ISP, right?

Carrier NAT has lots of bad consequences. It means that NAT-punching may stop working (because there may be two or three levels of it). It makes fraud detection harder. Plus, it's error prone -- once in a while, you'll get data that happens to look like your IP address, and you'll find that you can't send that precise sequence of bits in a packet ever because it'll get mangled by the NAT.

It also breaks IP-to-geography mapping.

Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#55

Post by pyre »

mfincham wrote: post #20
pyre wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would end-user software deal with an IPv6 address though? Surely some of it is IPv6 capable already, but I would imagine that a lot of it makes assumptions about IPv4. If the OS were operating on a IPv6 network, would that software function correctly as long as the addresses were IPv4-compatible (i.e. within the IPv4 range, and not in IPv6 notation)?

"It depends", is unfortunately the answer. For very old software where it's not possible to patch it for IPv6 support (this is rarer than you might think!) then some kind of IPv4 NAT or a DNS64 style "application layer gateway" is required. You could also potentially add a specific wrapper for your application e.g. wrapping MySQL connections inside of stunnel allows them to run over IPv6 in version of MySQL built wit…

> Almost no software you're likely to be running is incompatible with IPv6

What about user inputs that only accept IPv4-formatted addresses? :P

Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#56

Post by pyre »

rdtsc wrote: post #37
pyre wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would end-user software deal with an IPv6 address though? Surely some of it is IPv6 capable already, but I would imagine that a lot of it makes assumptions about IPv4. If the OS were operating on a IPv6 network, would that software function correctly as long as the addresses were IPv4-compatible (i.e. within the IPv4 range, and not in IPv6 notation)?

They had enough time. This is not a new thing. Some ISPs were more proactive, some were not. Those invested man hours and hopefully they will reap the benefits while their competitors struggle. Same with OS and software support. In the end some will profit from this (even the lazy ones -- "quick, pay us for a new version that enables IPv6 support) and some will lose (they'll find competitors did a better job at IPv6…

I'm mostly thinking about end-user applications that may just never get updated, though I can't come up with any off the top of my head.

Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#57

Post by justincormack »

mfincham wrote: post #20
pyre wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would end-user software deal with an IPv6 address though? Surely some of it is IPv6 capable already, but I would imagine that a lot of it makes assumptions about IPv4. If the OS were operating on a IPv6 network, would that software function correctly as long as the addresses were IPv4-compatible (i.e. within the IPv4 range, and not in IPv6 notation)?

"It depends", is unfortunately the answer. For very old software where it's not possible to patch it for IPv6 support (this is rarer than you might think!) then some kind of IPv4 NAT or a DNS64 style "application layer gateway" is required. You could also potentially add a specific wrapper for your application e.g. wrapping MySQL connections inside of stunnel allows them to run over IPv6 in version of MySQL built wit…

Some people seem behind eg Twisted didn't have support look last time I looked.

Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#58

Post by nwh »

wmf wrote: post #42
nwh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could buy the ranges back if they really desired. The results from the Carna botnet show just how sparse the usage of the allocated ranges is. It's practically empty for the entire left upper quadrant. http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/images/hilbert_icmp_...

A lot of IP addresses are used but not visible from the public Internet.

Oh I realise, I just have a hard time believing that Ford even has a tiny portion of their block allocated to anything.

Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#59

Post by jychang »

Afforess wrote: post #6
ars wrote: post #4

There are a ton of /8 still assigned to companies that don't need them. Ford, GE, IBM, AT&T (x2), Xerox, HP (x2), Apple, MIT, CSC, Eli Lilly, Nortel, Prudential Insurance, DuPont, Cap Debis, Merck, SITA. All of those can return their /8. That's 18 /8 potentially available. And does the DoD really need 12 /8's? I get that they want to network every person, gun, ship, tank, truck and plane. But none of those need to be…

Rumormill at IBM is that we bought some random companies a while back just for their IPv4 blocks. You didn't hear that from me though.

Doubt it, everything on IBM is natted to a 10.0.0.0/8 or is running externally to 9.0.0.0/8.

Source: I work at IBM, in a division that was another company that was bought out a few years back.

Re: We're about to hit phase 3 of ARIN IPV4 rationing

#60

Post by rjsw »

nwh wrote: post #58
wmf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of IP addresses are used but not visible from the public Internet.

Oh I realise, I just have a hard time believing that Ford even has a tiny portion of their block allocated to anything.

Ford has multiple design centres in different countries plus a lot of subcontractors who may need to connect to stuff from outside.

I can believe that they are using a large part of an /8.

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