C’mon, When Will We REALLY Be Out of IPv4 Addresses?
Sometimes I’m freaked out and sometimes I’m not. We’ve been through this before, right? It’s just the classic IPv4 exhaustion scare. I’m talking back when the IANA and the RIRs used to give away classful network allocations like they were Tootsie Rolls at an Independence Day parade. Back before NAT and before IPv6 was even ratified, the fear was here. So what’s different this time? Is it real? I think there are different factors that make it more of a threat of being legit this time.
The Bad News
1. Rapidly Accelerating Dependence Upon the Internet - So a show of hands of who can stay sane without accessing the Internet for more than an entire day? I’m guessing if you’re anything like me, it’s not many of you with hands up. Now think about your kids or nieces/nephews or younger friends. They’re even bigger junkies. As more people come online, more IP addresses are needed and this isn’t just residential. The needs of businesses are growing as well. I can not think of a single business that I interact with that does not use or for that matter, absolutely require the Internet in some way shape or form. Sure, this has been the case for a while now but I believe the exponential growth of demand with newer, more innovative uses is what no one really expected and what continues to surprise us all.
2. Companies Increasingly “Can not Go Down. Ever.” - This goes along with the business side of point number one but with a little bit different slant. I work with an increasing number of companies that need to build a highly redundant infrastructure to be sure they do not lose continuity in the event of an outage. These types of configurations usually require what’s called Multihoming using Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Utilizing BGP in this fashion means a pretty large minimum block of IP addresses (the minimum requirement in most networks is a /24 or 256 IP addresses) and another limited resource, an Autonomous System Number (ASN). A lot of these customers of service providers are flubbing their IP address need estimates to get the large block of IPs they don’t really need, simply so they can build a Multihomed network. This is wasteful use of IP addresses but unavoidable if the company wants to build a highly available network in the traditional manner utilizing more than one provider.
3. Everything Mobile - The way people use computers is and has always been changing very rapidly. With all of the options in smart phones and now teeny tiny computers like NetBooks, most folks want that little computer in their pocket or bag. The way people use computers today, that machine is worthless without Internet access on it. There are an estimated 3 billion mobile devices in the world with 2.3 billion people using those. That’s a ton of hosts, folks.
OK, so yeah, not looking good. But there has to be a way to keep going a little longer, right? Like I said, we’ve done it before.
Here’s the upside of the argument as I see it.
The Good News
1. There Are a Bunch of Assigned Yet Unused IPv4 Blocks - The IANA and RIRs are looking at ways that they can tighten their belts and be a little more strict on allocation of new blocks and reclamation of new blocks. They’ve also been doing a wonderful job of reclaiming some great big unused blocks that the US Government and BBN were sitting on. This might buy us some time, but we will still run out some day.
2. People Are Starting to Take IPv6 Seriously - Switching networks and clients to IPv6 is the best way around this problem, but it’s historically been a classic “chicken and egg” problem. No providers wanted to support or push it because there isn’t enough customer demand while those who are interested have trouble finding service providers that support it. That has changed for the service providers as IPv4 resources get tighter and tighter. The Number Resource Organization (NRO) reported this past December 2008 that IPv6 uptake has increased 300% in the past two years. This is reassuring to network operators that sweat a little with each client that orders a /24 not to mention that dreaded request to the RIR for more IP addresses.
3. The Economic Slowdown - This actually can go either way. With more people out of work browsing for jobs or working from home we could actually be looking at a dispersion of hosts from aggregation at an office to more individual home networks. Luckily, most folks at home don’t care about much less know the difference between IPv4 and IPv6 so switching them should be seamless when all of the services they expect to use are available on IPv6. Something else to consider is companies looking to gain efficiencies by automation with more servers and services are being added online every day. It has to be significant savings to do so and most have already found these gains. Some others say that with less fluid financial resources to supplant technology efforts, the addition of more services online should slow down. From what I’m seeing, I actually think we may see a dip for a bit due to the latter. Companies are going out of business and giving back their blocks of IP addresses to service providers and I’d imagine the RIRs. It’s actually a relief in the scope of the IPv4 exhaustion problem to give IPv6 adoption the chance to gain more ground, though quite upsetting for a number of other obvious reasons.
So there may be some mostly positive things happening that could stem the tide.
You might be asking…
What can I do?
- Start using IPv6. Now. I mean even just playing with it on something like TunnelBroker.
- Tell people responsible for broken IPv6 applications to fix them. Report bugs.
- Ask your service provider to go IPv6. It’s time, folks.
- Don’t be the douche that gets more IP addresses than he needs. Seriously, be cool. They aren’t limitless, you know.
So I’m not sure what the answer to the question posed is. Only time will tell but I think we’ll figure out something. Too much is riding on it not to.
I have read prety much any book or related article that I could find on IPv6 migration and trnasition. One of the more interesting notes that I found out there in “neverland” (also known as the internet, and on page like 20 of a Google search), I found a report form IANA about the exhaustion of IPv4 address space. Do not know how accurate the report was, but IANA expected a full exhaustion of IPv4 space by early 2011. At that time, IANA would cease to give out IPv4 address spaces and go strictly to IPv6.
However, I am having doubts about the accuracy of this report after reading that they are actually recovering unused v4 space from governments and private sectors to help some what relieve the stress. (I did not see anything about the recovery in my readings).