Live data from Hacker News

Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

networkworld.com

21–30 of 149 posts

Re: Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

#21

This article is focused on the US, a country which was never really going to feel the brunt of the IPv4 crunch. For an example of a real victim, look at Qatar, a country which only has a single IP address for the entire country (everyone sits behind a NAT): https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Qatari_proxy_IP_address_tempora... [0] Whenever someone from Qatar decides to vandalize Wikipedia, Wikipedia is forced (temporarily)…

Why not use something else to ban users in this case? For example the user agent, browser window resolution, installed fonts, etc.

Re: Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

#23
post #18

Doesn't the US defence department hold a ridiculous amount of the address space? What would it take for them to give some of that up?

Why bother? The switch needs to be made eventually, so why kick the can down the road?

Because places like Qatar are suffering as a result of the US and others dragging their feet.

Re: Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

#24
post #10

> The day of reckoning still looms – it’s just been pushed out as the major Internet players have developed ingenious ways to stretch those available numbers. To me, this indicates something either broken about IPv6 or a lessened severity of the IPv4 problem: If it's better to apply bandaids to IPv4 than to roll out IPv6, then either IPv6 is not easy and flexible enough to be a viable alternative, or the problems fac…

It's both. IPv6 is not an easy migration, and people already have decades of experience squeezing the most they can out of IPv4, so the short-term solutions have just been to just squeeze IPv4 a little harder until everyone working on IPv6 gets it fully operational.

Re: Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

#26

This article is focused on the US, a country which was never really going to feel the brunt of the IPv4 crunch. For an example of a real victim, look at Qatar, a country which only has a single IP address for the entire country (everyone sits behind a NAT): https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Qatari_proxy_IP_address_tempora... [0] Whenever someone from Qatar decides to vandalize Wikipedia, Wikipedia is forced (temporarily)…

You act like Wikipedia has no agency in this matter and is simply forced to block Qatar's IP address from editing.

Wikipedia has choices, and it's choosing something well within its rights to prevent abuse of its property, but they could choose to do something different.

Re: Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

#27
post #21

This article is focused on the US, a country which was never really going to feel the brunt of the IPv4 crunch. For an example of a real victim, look at Qatar, a country which only has a single IP address for the entire country (everyone sits behind a NAT): https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Qatari_proxy_IP_address_tempora... [0] Whenever someone from Qatar decides to vandalize Wikipedia, Wikipedia is forced (temporarily)…

Why not use something else to ban users in this case? For example the user agent, browser window resolution, installed fonts, etc.

Those can all be changed. A determined spammer could make a bot that automatically changes them.

Re: Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

#28
post #3

This is an extremely US-centric article. ARIN was never in as dire straits as the other RIRs. In Europe and Asia the situation is much worse. For example, lack of IPv4 addresses delayed DigitalOcean's growth in Amsterdam, and carrier-grade NAT is already being used by some consumer ISPs in Europe and Asia.

ARIN requires the demonstration of need before it allocates space. RIPE does not, it's just first come, first serve. I'm not sure about APNIC or LACNIC, and since AFRINIC is modeled heavily off of ARIN, I think they require need too, but things are so fucked over there I have no idea if that policy transferred.

Re: Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

#29

It's here. IP addresses are costing more and providers are less generous with them. It used to be common to get a handful with a dedicated server, now you get one or two. I have a friend who runs a small low-cost minecraft hosting. He stopped giving his customers dedicated IPs at all. They get a range of ports and a hostname with appropriate srv records added. That's the other result, technical work-arounds. You can…

This is basically how it should work. Prices rise until alternatives become worth thinking about.

Re: Whatever happened to the IPv4 address crisis?

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever someone from Qatar decides to vandalize Wikipedia, Wikipedia is forced (temporarily) to block the entire country from accessing Wikipedia Can't they just block IPs from editing ? Seems like that would solve the problem

That's what they do. But this still prevents everyone in Qatar (who does not have an IP ban exception) from editing.

How many of Qatar's 2 million people use the internet, and how many of them pay for a VPN service? (https://www.bestvpn.com/blog/6715/5-best-vpns-for-qatar/ indicates there are a lot of internet cafes whose owners are using VPNs and passing on the access to customers.) It sounds to me like a person from Qatar wouldn't have a problem editing wiki if they wanted to, nor a vandal from vandalizing if they wanted to...
Post reply on HN