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

MIT no longer owns 18.0.0.0/8

whois.arin.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–146 of 146 posts

Re: MIT no longer owns 18.0.0.0/8

#141

Post by apostacy »

crisopolis wrote: post #129
apostacy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'd love to use ipv6. In fact, I can't wait. But, what am I supposed to do? * T-mobile: ipv4 * Office: ipv4 * Verizon: ipv4 * University: ipv4 * Linode: ipv6 (but flagged as hostile) Google will not just show me captchas, but will deactivate accounts if I use some of their apis. I had to reverify several accounts when I've tried using ipv6. I'm not being backward about ipv4, I'm really not. But we're in denial…

Yeah, T-Mo is IPv6 on smartphones such as Android/iPhone.

I route all of my mobile traffic through an older Android device that only connects to their 3G network. Maybe that's why...

Re: MIT no longer owns 18.0.0.0/8

#142

Post by klodolph »

apostacy wrote: post #111
klodolph wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we agree on what the purpose of a university is. I'd say the purposes of a University are research and post-secondary education. MIT is not some kind of general-purpose charity with the vague goal of improving society. It sounds like they decided that $50M is more useful than an /8 block for achieving their mission. All I'm hearing in response is the unjustified assertion that the IPv4 addresses are mor…

Obviously IPv4 addresses are useful, because people are offering money for them. My understanding of what they are used for, is to support clients behind NAT. But there could be some further application that I am not aware of. If IPv4 addresses are useful to Microsoft or Amazon, then perhaps they can be useful to the general public, in some way. Indeed, MIT already provides IPv4 hosting to anyone who physically shows…

This answer is profoundly unsatisfying.

It sounds like the argument is that IPv4 addresses are useful to ISPs and cloud providers, therefore they must be useful to MIT. Somehow. The question of why IPv4 addresses would be useful to MIT is completely dodged.

I am also reading the comment about what universities should be doing and it sounds contradictory. You say the job of a university is to "educate certain people", but then complain that some universities are "just educational and research facilities". It feels like complaining that a bakery is "merely a provider of baked goods".

Education and research are part of the university's mission. Making the world a better place isn't the mission, it's the desired outcome of education and research. So giving grants to students so they can attend classes furthers the university's mission, and giving grants to faculty so they can do research furthers the university's mission, but providing IPv4 addresses to some vague hypothetical project is not part of MIT's mission.

Re: MIT no longer owns 18.0.0.0/8

#143

Post by aaronmdjones »

droidist2 wrote: post #114
syncsynchalt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only similar if you ignore that there are 2^64 available /64s. We're never going to be in danger of running out, so the use of /64s allows potentially interesting application of the host part of the address (uses so far include stateless autoconfiguration and privacy addresses).

> We're never going to be in danger of running out. Just wait until every cell in your body has its own IP.

An estimate for the number of cells in an adult human being is ~37.2 trillion [1]. Let's be conservative and round that up to 40, and then assume that everyone on earth is an adult, too.

There are currently 7.49 billion people in the world [2]. Let's be conservative again and round that up to 8.

Multiplying these numbers gives us 3.2x10^23 cells. The IPv6 Global Unicast address space (2000::/3) is 125 bits wide, for 2^125 = 4.3x10^37 combinations. This gives us 1.33x10^14 addresses per cell.

Ofcourse, thinking about IPv6 in terms of number of addresses is wrong, because you should be thinking in terms of number of networks (/64). That gives us 2^(125-64) = 2.3x10^18 networks, or 0.000007 networks per cell, which is 268054250 networks per person.

I think we're okay.

[1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-372-trill... [2] http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

EDIT: Fixed formatting.

Re: MIT no longer owns 18.0.0.0/8

#144

Post by ShirleyMarquez »

apostacy wrote: post #14

That's too bad. I think universities should make these resources that they've been granted available to students and researchers. Last time I was at the MIT media lab for a conference, I was able to get an unfirewalled external ip address from their wireless network. It was amazing. I briefly streamed live audio of a talk via shoutcast, but of course, nobody uses that stuff anymore. It really makes you ponder what a…

MIT had about 700 IPv4 addresses for every human being involved with the Institute - students, faculty, and staff. They're only putting half of them on the market, so they will still have 350 per person. I don't think it's going to compromise the quality of their network services or the availability of IP addresses for people who want them.

Like most large institutions, MIT doesn't give public IP addresses to most client devices (desktops, laptops, phones, and tablets); they get DHCP address in the 10.x.x.x range behind a NAT because it's a bit easier to firewall them that way. But real IP addresses are available if you need them to run services.

Re: MIT no longer owns 18.0.0.0/8

#145

Post by ShirleyMarquez »

apostacy wrote: post #134
ghaff wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If they don't have a use for them, they should make them available for someone who does. Not just sell them to be used for some corporation's infrastructure. Isn't selling them off to someone who will pay money for them pretty much the definition of making them available for someone who has a use for them? It's not like you can't buy an IPv4 address if you want one because Amazon and Google own them all. We just hav…

I guess it's a matter of opinion. If a university had some prime real estate, they could sell it to the highest bidder so that they could build a shopping mall, or they could donate it to a non-profit that would improve society in some way, thereby fulfilling their mission, to improve society. Or they could just cash out and getting more money could arguably improve society in a less tangible, less measurable way. Un…

That hasn't been completely true for a few years. If you just walk onto campus with a wireless device and use the public network (the one that doesn't require authentication) you get a 10.x.x.x address behind a NAT and it has some firewall restrictions. (They're pretty light; it's mostly to keep out some network attacks.) I think you do still get a public address if you plug into an Ethernet port, and you may get one if you use the MIT SECURE wireless network.

MIT's network policies are not purely about what makes financial sense. The Institute was one of the birthplaces of the internet, and they see the ongoing development of it as one of their core missions. MIT has a close relationship with W3C, which is located a stone's throw away. Their network is multi-homed to the max; I think they peer with ALL the backbone providers that operate in the US. The school has ludicrous amounts of internet bandwidth; I think it's now measured in terabits per second. After all, they have to be able to cope with thousands of students watching Netflix along with all the research!

And just in case there is a REAL internet collapse... they have an emergency info site at mit.NET that is hosted far away from the campus. That would let them get some information out even if Cambridge were wiped off the map and all the name servers for .edu were to fail.

Re: MIT no longer owns 18.0.0.0/8

#146

Post by ShirleyMarquez »

cperciva wrote: post #26
apostacy wrote: post #14

That's too bad. I think universities should make these resources that they've been granted available to students and researchers. Last time I was at the MIT media lab for a conference, I was able to get an unfirewalled external ip address from their wireless network. It was amazing. I briefly streamed live audio of a talk via shoutcast, but of course, nobody uses that stuff anymore. It really makes you ponder what a…

That's too bad. I think universities should make these resources that they've been granted available to students and researchers. They are... indirectly. MIT can do far more to assist students and researchers using the money they raise by selling off IP addresses than they can by holding on to the addresses in case 16 million students all decide that they want to host their own podcasts.

16 million students!! The school only has a bit over 11,000 students, and just over 12,000 faculty and staff. In other words, they had about 700 addresses per person. After the sale they will only have 350.
Post reply on HN