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AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

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Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#221
post #146
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in the cloud hosting industry for a decade and a half. The entire time, we were warned about the IPv4 shortage and how we needed to switch to IPv6 soon(tm). Well, things haven't changed. Everyone is dragging their feet on IPv6 adoption from hosting providers, ISPs, hardware manufacturers, and software developers. I predicted this years ago and always said that it would require a government mandate to move…

All this is because IPv6 addresses are too long. If they’d made it 48 or 64 bits we would be fully converted by now. We are dragging because people hate using it. I’ve been saying this for years. Nobody gets it because geeks don’t get ergonomics.

IMO it's because they used stupid semicolons in the syntax instead of sticking with periods. Nobody likes hitting the shift key, especially so rapidly and while typing numbers.

Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do default IPv6 on. https://blog.cloudflare.com/always-on-ipv6/ And the chart in that blog shows the dent we made.

This will show my lack of ipv6 knowledge but I’ll ask anyway. Say I have an endpoint service somewhere listening only on ipv6. Let’s take any sort of CDN out of the equation for simplicity. Can I use Cloudflare DNS for the service, such that anyone using ipv6 will connect directly to my service, of course— but can CF do some magic ipv4->ipv6 translation/bridge sort of thing, so that someone on ipv4-only will also be…

It wouldn't be magic.... the AAAA record for DNS would point to your server, and the A record would point to cloudflare.

Of course, it is up to the client, then, to decide which address to use. Not all clients default to v6 even if it is available.

Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#223
post #215
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZeroTier has a flat address space governed by a single algorithm. The Internet is a loose hierarchy of independently-managed networks. These problems have quite different addressing requirements. Analogy: ZeroTier is to https://plus.codes/ as IPv6 is to mailing addresses. A mailing address is pretty long, but you can use its structure to route the mail efficiently.

The Internet is governed by a single algorithm: IP routing. Short IP addresses are a lot easier than short cryptographic addresses. Adding 16 or 32 more bits to IPv4 would have been trivial. The existing IPv4 address space becomes 0.0.n.n.n.n or perhaps 0.n.n.n.n.0 if you wanted to give every existing IP 256 addresses to assign while also multiplying the IP space by 256. Easy, easy, easy.

You're describing 6to4, where the existing IPv4 address space becomes 2002:nnnn:nnnn::/48. You can treat the 80 bit suffix as 8 bits when designing a network.

Problem is, stacking the new protocol on top of IPv4 was never very reliable, so 6to4 is mostly dead now. It would've worked a bit better if the Internet had used 2002::/16 exclusively.

Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, how much does it cost for you to run this? Not that I'm willing to pay $10k for my own /24, but I find this super interesting. I just installed a new FTTH ISP at home and learned the hard way what CG-NAT is, after years of having my own public IP with my previous ISP.

The /24 itself doesn’t cost me anything. I registered it before ARIN existed and it’s considered a “legacy” block. No fees cause I never signed their registration agreement. I pay about $180/month for a “business internet” cable line. 300 megabits down, 25 up. I also “know a guy” at the ISP who made sure the routing wasn’t going to be an issue.

Yep, I was wondering more about the ongoing costs of "operating" the block. I was reading a superuser.com question [1] about it and it mentions ongoing costs, like transit, BGP routing etc.

This is super interesting! I didn't know this was even possible before I started looking into it.

[1]https://superuser.com/questions/323801/how-can-i-own-an-ip-a...

Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#225
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there's a large pool of IP addresses used by residential ISPs that could be recycled relatively easily. When I lived in Ireland I only got a public IPv6, my IPv4 was behind CG-NAT. The nerd in me wasn't a fan of that on paper, but in reality I didn't have any issues with it. I could see ISPs making a quick buck by switching to CG-NAT on IPv4 so they can sell off their IPv4 blocks. Those IPs being recycled for…

Problem with CGNAT is the costs involved in bookkeeping for law enforcement. Where an IPv4 solution for your clients only needs change-logging on IPbinding-to-client level, the CG-NAT requires you as an ISP to log every outgoing IPv4/port combination with timestamp to client mapping. Which requires A LOT more storage and much more expensive equipment. Going rate per IPv4 is up to $40 nowadays, selling of your v4 bloc…

Even better idea, don't keep those logs in the first place. Tell LE you have nothing for them.

Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#226
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPv6 makes addressing easy and addresses free. Let's not keep NAT alive.

While I'm all for IPv6 - there's precious little about v6 that's easier. On top of that, there's a whole lot of software that either doesn't support v6, or has major problems.

If you want to lay out a structured space of addresses you can without worrying how much it will cost. Of course other problems don't change.

It's been many years but most software I work with just works. Granted I don't work with a ton of old proprietary software.

Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#227
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with Ford. And while I do think the addresses should be returned, they should get market value or above for them. We should not punish companies for buying into the future, which turned out to be a great investment.

Alternative view - those addresses should not be "returned". They're owned. I hope hoarders will get blocks as large as they can so that we experience real shortage and start seeing the first ipv6-only services.

The addresses are not owned by those in the list. They are allocated for an ongoing yearly fee.

Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#228

I wish that instead of buying more IPv4 blocks, AWS would drastically lower the price of NAT gateways, then charge extra for EC2 instances and Fargate tasks with public IPs, to make it a no-brainer to stop wasting public IPs. As it stands, it's cheaper to waste public IPs than to use NAT gateways. Addendum: I also wish I could volunteer to be switched over to CGNAT for my personal IPv4 traffic. This discussion got me…

Regarding NAT gateway pricing (~ $30/month or so iirc) we can use a micro (~ $10/month) Linux instance, it's quite literally about 2 commands (sysctl enable ip forwarding and a masquerade iptables command) or a short script to set it up.

Also, NAT gateways don't support TCP or ICMP fragementation. Not always a killer, but when it is, it is.

Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#229

I wish that instead of buying more IPv4 blocks, AWS would drastically lower the price of NAT gateways, then charge extra for EC2 instances and Fargate tasks with public IPs, to make it a no-brainer to stop wasting public IPs. As it stands, it's cheaper to waste public IPs than to use NAT gateways. Addendum: I also wish I could volunteer to be switched over to CGNAT for my personal IPv4 traffic. This discussion got me…

It really depends on your needs - I use nano sized SPOT instances for NAT gateways which only cost a penny a month. They in no way compete with the 40gbs capacity and high availability of the hardware NAT devices but if the majority of your traffic is internal, going to a peered VPC, or over IPV6 and you just need a means to make an occasional API call to one of the AWS endpoints that don’t yet support IPV6 (which is the majority of them), then it’s a perfectly viable solution - better then sharing a hardware NAT IMO because you can take advantage of network traffic within the same availability zone being free.

Re: AWS adds an extra 5.5M IPv4 addresses

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will show my lack of ipv6 knowledge but I’ll ask anyway. Say I have an endpoint service somewhere listening only on ipv6. Let’s take any sort of CDN out of the equation for simplicity. Can I use Cloudflare DNS for the service, such that anyone using ipv6 will connect directly to my service, of course— but can CF do some magic ipv4->ipv6 translation/bridge sort of thing, so that someone on ipv4-only will also be…

You should be able to advertise your ipv6 endpoint in the AAAA record, going direct to the origin, while make the A records pointers to Cloudflare which can then proxy back to your v6-only origin servers.

Awesome, thanks for the answers all! Sounds simple enough!
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