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The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

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Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#61

Post by eli »

pash wrote: post #53
bo1024 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and, anyone who didn't have $1bn to spend would be SOL. There's plenty of numbers to go around; the sooner we get to v6 and get around this mess, the better.

What an embarrassing failure of economic reasoning. IPv4 addresses are a scare resource. Acknowledging that, and allowing them to be traded at a price that reflects their value, is the surest way to get them out of the hands of those who are wasting them in the way tptacek and the article describe and into the hands of those who will do something more productive with them. Pricing IPv4 addresses would hasten adoption…

But (and someone correct me if I'm wrong), but individual IP addresses are not a commodity. If you broke apart that /8 and auctioned them off, if would be a routing nightmare.

Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#62

Post by Dave_Rosenthal »

mayneack wrote: post #43
tomjen3 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an idea of how many IPv4 addresses that are unused or not really needed? Between the bunch MIT got, the bunch that the military got and the bunch that IBM got, we can implement an entirely new protocol before we run out.

At MIT a 30 person living group gets 18.n.x.x

As an 18.205.x.x alum, I can confirm this incredible fact.

Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#63

Post by BerislavLopac »

pash wrote: post #53
bo1024 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and, anyone who didn't have $1bn to spend would be SOL. There's plenty of numbers to go around; the sooner we get to v6 and get around this mess, the better.

What an embarrassing failure of economic reasoning. IPv4 addresses are a scare resource. Acknowledging that, and allowing them to be traded at a price that reflects their value, is the surest way to get them out of the hands of those who are wasting them in the way tptacek and the article describe and into the hands of those who will do something more productive with them. Pricing IPv4 addresses would hasten adoption…

Actually no, IP addresses are not a resource. They're not limited at all, except by convenience which was chosen at a time when they had to chose a limit and it was not practical to set it any higher. All that is needed is to make a new standard which allows for a higher practical limit -- and that's what we're doing with IPv6.

So I?v4 addresses only seem valuable in this moment, because so many of them have been distributed -- bvut something that can be added in unlimited quantities (like a number) is inherently not valuable.

Do you remember when DOS and Windows file names could only contain eight plus three letters? Was the solution to proclaim file names valuable and charge extra for adding new combinations? Or simply to develop a new platform which allowed for longer names?

Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#64

Post by wglb »

geofft wrote: post #59
jrockway wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The transition has sort of already happened. Most software stacks support IPv6 now, and many server hosting companies are giving out IPv6 addresses like candy. (I think I have a /48 or something for jrock.us. That's 2 to the 48th IPv4 Internets! I have a lot of computers, but not that many.) All that's left are the clients, and the way I see that transition happening is in the low-cost sector. Sort of like an AOL whe…

"The transition has sort of already happened," he says, over IPv4. Seriously, unless you want to be posting to HN via IPv4 in 2050, there is clearly something major left undone. Don't call it a transition if you think that concept is undone, but it's not yet functionally possible to be on the Internet with no IPv4 stack or (possibly NATted) address, and I don't see that becoming the case anytime soon. See http://cr.y…

That was the answer that my question was leading to. Thanks.

Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#65

Post by tptacek »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #63
pash wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an embarrassing failure of economic reasoning. IPv4 addresses are a scare resource. Acknowledging that, and allowing them to be traded at a price that reflects their value, is the surest way to get them out of the hands of those who are wasting them in the way tptacek and the article describe and into the hands of those who will do something more productive with them. Pricing IPv4 addresses would hasten adoption…

Actually no, IP addresses are not a resource. They're not limited at all, except by convenience which was chosen at a time when they had to chose a limit and it was not practical to set it any higher. All that is needed is to make a new standard which allows for a higher practical limit -- and that's what we're doing with IPv6. So I?v4 addresses only seem valuable in this moment, because so many of them have been dis…

What you've done here is generalized the concept out so far that we can't discuss it. We're not talking about a fuzzy concept of "addresses"; we're talking specifically about IPv4 RIB entries.

Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#66

Post by tptacek »

bo1024 wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #26

There are lots of stories like this. Many of them are worse; at least you can imagine that the UK is holding these addresses in reserve. There are companies with giant allocations that are holding them so that they can give every desktop and every printer in their enterprise a routable address; others are doing the same thing, but also operating flat, unrouted networks . More evidence for the core problem: fiat alloc…

...and, anyone who didn't have $1bn to spend would be SOL. There's plenty of numbers to go around; the sooner we get to v6 and get around this mess, the better.

The opposite is true. The current situation incentivizes entities with billion dollar budgets to hold address space forever, because there is no cost to them for doing so.

Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#67

Post by tptacek »

eli wrote: post #61
pash wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an embarrassing failure of economic reasoning. IPv4 addresses are a scare resource. Acknowledging that, and allowing them to be traded at a price that reflects their value, is the surest way to get them out of the hands of those who are wasting them in the way tptacek and the article describe and into the hands of those who will do something more productive with them. Pricing IPv4 addresses would hasten adoption…

But (and someone correct me if I'm wrong), but individual IP addresses are not a commodity. If you broke apart that /8 and auctioned them off, if would be a routing nightmare.

It would if you auctioned off small prefixes, but the answer to that is just not to do that.

Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#68

Post by wmf »

bo1024 wrote: post #35
tptacek wrote: post #26

There are lots of stories like this. Many of them are worse; at least you can imagine that the UK is holding these addresses in reserve. There are companies with giant allocations that are holding them so that they can give every desktop and every printer in their enterprise a routable address; others are doing the same thing, but also operating flat, unrouted networks . More evidence for the core problem: fiat alloc…

...and, anyone who didn't have $1bn to spend would be SOL. There's plenty of numbers to go around; the sooner we get to v6 and get around this mess, the better.

Realistically, anyone with an /8 to sell would probably break it up. There is some speculation that legacy holders are selling off their unused addresses slowly because a glut would reduce prices.

Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#69

Post by tptacek »

forgotusername wrote: post #5

I'm not sure about the definition of 'unused', just because a network is not visible from the Internet and has no publicly registered ASNs doesn't mean its numbers are not in private use (which AFAIK, was always a legitimate use-case for getting an allocation, and in many ways preferable to reusing RFC1918 space). Added to that, even if it was seeing only minuscule internal use, the UK government's IT project reputat…

Under what circumstances is it the best thing for people to use otherwise routable IP addresses instead of private IP space?

Re: The UK has an entire IPv4 /8 that it isn't using

#70

Post by wmf »

geofft wrote: post #59
jrockway wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The transition has sort of already happened. Most software stacks support IPv6 now, and many server hosting companies are giving out IPv6 addresses like candy. (I think I have a /48 or something for jrock.us. That's 2 to the 48th IPv4 Internets! I have a lot of computers, but not that many.) All that's left are the clients, and the way I see that transition happening is in the low-cost sector. Sort of like an AOL whe…

"The transition has sort of already happened," he says, over IPv4. Seriously, unless you want to be posting to HN via IPv4 in 2050, there is clearly something major left undone. Don't call it a transition if you think that concept is undone, but it's not yet functionally possible to be on the Internet with no IPv4 stack or (possibly NATted) address, and I don't see that becoming the case anytime soon. See http://cr.y…

The transition plan is called Dual Stack Lite or NAT64.
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