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The Internet

Asia Running Out Of IP Addresses 732

Posted by timothy from the ip-address-in-every-pot dept.
miladus writes "According to a story at Zdnet, Asian countries are running out of IP addresses. China, for example, was assigned 22 million IP addresses (for a population of 1.3 billion) under IPv4. The US owns 70 percent of current IP addresses. Perhaps IPv6 will solve the problem."
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Asia Running Out Of IP Addresses More

Asia Running Out Of IP Addresses

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  • IPv6 soon? (Score:4, Funny)

    by zoloto ( 586738 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:06PM (#6060362)
    I'm still waiting for duke nukem forever!

  • This again? (Score:5, Funny)

    by FatSean ( 18753 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:07PM (#6060371) Homepage Journal
    The world has been running out of IP addresses, and suffering from global warming for as long as I can remember...
  • Nah, NAT will solve the problem - about a zillion times less expensive to implement.

    • Re:IPv6? (Score:4, Funny)

      by pVoid ( 607584 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:18PM (#6060529)
      Yeah... NAT off the great firewall of China.

      I can just see in the far far future, when there will be sentient computer programs, they will refer to China as "the anti-matter land"...

      "Mother sentient program: In the anti-matter land, there is someone with the exact same IP address as yours son...

      Child sentient program: Woooww..."

    • Re:IPv6? Yes because NAT is too limited (Score:5, Informative)

      by jcdr ( 178250 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:18PM (#6060532)
      NAT is pefect to extend the network of one single entity, but is a very limited solution to extend the network to several entity.

      If you have only one public adresse you have a single port for each services. Despite the fact that most services can extended by virtual one this is not the case for all of them (think SSH, or IPSec for example) and this require a high degre of coordination between the entity.

      So IPv6 could be the cheapest way to solve the problem. And this could provids a good boost to the network market...

      • If your company thinks NAT is too limited, then it should have gotten, or be getting, its own IPv6 assignment. Cite the address. If it's a case of your management not understanding the problem and the solution, give me your CEO's home phone number and I'll given him a call at 3AM and whisper into his ear "IPv6 ... IPv6 ... you want IPv6 ... IPv6 will make your network better, faster, cheaper ... IPv6 ... do IPv6 now".

    • Re:IPv6? (Score:5, Informative)

      by DJ Rubbie ( 621940 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:21PM (#6060578) Homepage Journal
      Nah, NAT will solve the problem - about a zillion times less expensive to implement.

      Nope, absolutely wrong.

      While all computers on the same NAT can directly connect to others, it cannot do so easily to others on another NAT, or other 'real' IP addresses. This effectively prevents anyone from running any server that can serve to networks outside the NAT, unless some ports are designated at the NAT router level specificly for that particular server. I don't see ISP's or network admins designating specific port ranges for every computer, as it takes work, and it could conflict with applications that uses specific port ranges (such as file transfers on MSN used by illiterate users who can't use ftp).

      I would say using NAT to solve this problem is all but a cheap bandage that will cost more in the long run. IPv6 must be implemented soon to ensure the continue growth of the Internet.

      • Re:IPv6? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by York the Mysterious ( 556824 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:01PM (#6060995) Homepage
        My old school district had a neat NAT setup. Every server in the district had the same NATed IP, but if you made a request for the DNS address of a server on a specific allowed port it wold forward it to the internal IP. Very smart NAT. It also makes a lot of port scanners that require IPs worthless.
        mail.nths.nvusd.k12.ca.us request on port 80 go to 10.10.10.3:80
        mail.nths.nvusd.k12.ca.us request on 25 goes to 10.10.10.3:25
        nths.nvusd.k12.ca.us request on port 80 goes to 10.10.10.2
        It was probably loads of fun to manually set this up, but it works

  • Corporations are at fault? (Score:5, Informative)

    by sinergy ( 88242 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:08PM (#6060388) Homepage
    I personally know of many large corporations that have several Class-B networks that they use for non-accessible internal routing. I'm sure their numbers are much higher than just the one's I've come across. Couldn't somebody review who has all of those assigned addresses and help(force) them to migrate to private ranges?

    • Re:Corporations are at fault? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by agentZ ( 210674 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:15PM (#6060497)
      And ditto for some class A networks. I know that MIT does a LOT of computer research, but do they really need an entire class A? Did you know that each fraternity at MIT has their own class B? Really! For an example, try looking the hostnames for the routers in some of the frat houses.

      $ host 18.[231-238].0.1
      • actually, they're not /16s [mit.edu]

      • Re:Corporations are at fault? (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Every fraternity has their own class B? That seems odd. If I recall, that's what my entire college runs on (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). And my fraternity doesn't get any of it. We have 30 guys running through a single linksys router hooked up to a cable modem, and we're thankful for that. We also have to walk to class uphill both ways, in the snow.

    • Re:Corporations are at fault? (Score:5, Informative)

      by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara.hudson@b ... m ['son' in gap]> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:25PM (#6060625) Journal
      ... and some of them have class A addresses that they cannot possibly fill. IANA Address assignments [iana.org]
      003/8 May 94 General Electric Company

      004/8 Dec 92 Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.
      005/8 Jul 95 IANA - Reserved
      006/8 Feb 94 Army Information Systems Center
      007/8 Apr 95 IANA - Reserved
      008/8 Dec 92 Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.
      009/8 Aug 92 IBM
      010/8 Jun 95 IANA - Private Use See [RFC1918]
      011/8 May 93 DoD Intel Information Systems
      012/8 Jun 95 AT&T Bell Laboratories
      013/8 Sep 91 Xerox Corporation
      014/8 Jun 91 IANA - Public Data Network
      015/8 Jul 94 Hewlett-Packard Company
      016/8 Nov 94 Digital Equipment Corporation
      017/8 Jul 92 Apple Computer Inc.
      018/8 Jan 94 MIT
      019/8 May 95 Ford Motor Company
      • Some of those have been sold/reassigned/leased. I know, your source ought to have a current list. For instance, I recently setup a customer who has an address in the 4.0.0.0 network, and they definately aren't Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., they just had a Class C or smaller in that block.

        Interesting to see the first five: IANA, Xerox, Apple, IBM, Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.

        "Which one of these things is not like the other one?"... or "Which one of these really doesn't need 32 Million IP addresses". [unic
      • Think about manufacturing.. how many devices are IP-enabled nowadays.. now go through your list and think about companies that produce no less than millions of parts per year, and therefore have tremendous manufacturing facilities that have ip-enabled sh*t all over the place..

        General Electric Company - Massive production lines
        Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. - They (not Gore) invented the 'Net
        Army Information Systems Center - um, the **ARMY**
        Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc. - again
        IBM - (my employer) HUGE MANUFACT

        • Re:Corporations are at fault? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara.hudson@b ... m ['son' in gap]> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:22PM (#6061205) Journal
          <qoute> Think about manufacturing.. how many devices are IP-enabled nowadays.. now go through your list and think about companies that produce no less than millions of parts per year, and therefore have tremendous manufacturing facilities that have ip-enabled sh*t all over the place..</quote>

          There's no reason why these devices should have externally-visible IP addresses (and a lot of good reasons why they shouldn't). if you think about it. Imagine what would happen if you could hack into the welding robots on Ford's assembly lines, or GE's, or "War Games" the AISC., DoD, etc.

          That's the reason for 10.n.n.n, 192.n.n.n, etc. Private networks. :-)

          • That's the reason for 10.n.n.n, 192.n.n.n, etc. Private networks

            No it's not. It's for people who can't or don't want to get real IPs.

            There are a lot of reasons why so-called private devices would want a real IP address. First and foremost is so that they can send out requests to the Internet and the receiver of requests will know where to send the response. Firewall all you want, but two-way communication is still important.

            NAT is a hack.
    • I know for a fact this is true.

      One company that I've worked with uses a routable /16 (same size as a class B) externally and a routable /16 internally and NATs between the two of them.

      What's super annoying is that we have some permanent connectivity to them and they give out different IPs depending on the source of the DNS query. We're not fully integrated with them, so it makes for loads of fun trying to do resolution correctly.

      I think it's a waste of addresses. Give back the public-facing /16 they us
    • Who is this 'someone'? And how can they take something that another entity owns? These class A assignments came well before IANA and whoever doled out /24s to whoever could figure out a SWIP.

      Class A and B owners shouldn't have to move to 'private' (RFC1918) address space. 1918 space used in a one-to-many NAT is a hack that breaks end-to-end. IPv6 maintains e2e and is preferable. I'm sitting on a huge network numbered out of RFC1918 right now, which is a pain in the balls.

      And while I'm soapboxing, although

    • Re:Corporations are at fault? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bob ( 73 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @06:21PM (#6061694) Homepage
      At my suggestion, a few years ago my employer tried to give back a class B because we didn't really need it, asking only for a handful of class C numbers in return. Turned out to be harder than you might think, and it never happened. Now, since we never got the class C nets either, parts of the class B are in use and it would be a huge PITA to rip it out, so most of it's pretty much lost address space. So don't put all the blame on the holders of those nets -- a lot of the problem stems from mis-managment of the resource.

  • 32 bits ought to be enough (Score:5, Funny)

    by D0wnsp0ut ( 321316 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:08PM (#6060393) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps IPv6 will solve the problem.

    Perhaps this could signal a limit on the amount of spam coming from China?

  • time to give split up some class A's ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by i.r.id10t ( 595143 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:09PM (#6060404)
    Perhaps it is time to split up some class A networks so that more could be released for other users... for example, I'm sure that even MIT isn't using all 16.something million addresses their 18.foo class A allows for...

    That, or one heck of a NAT is needed.

  • I wonder why they don't use the non-routable address spaces and NAT.

    Let's also remember (since I detected some trolling in the article) that Asia was a backwater for the Internet 20 years ago when address blocks started to be doled out, so naturally the U.S. and to a lesser extent Europe got the bulk of the blocks.

  • They could always NAT (Score:3, Interesting)

    by krisp ( 59093 ) * on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:09PM (#6060411) Homepage
    Let the other billion or so people NAT the remaining ip addresses! 10.x.x.x adds another 16M, and they can 192.168.x.x behind those :)

  • This only means (Score:5, Insightful)

    by earthforce_1 ( 454968 ) <earthforce_1@y[ ]o.com ['aho' in gap]> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:09PM (#6060412) Journal
    That they will be the first on the block to adopt IPV6 of course. Being late to the party usually means you get the chance to base your infrastucture on superior technology. Both the first celluar service and the first HD television was analog based, and the early adopters wound up with inferior technology.

  • Asia is one of the primary adopters of IPv6 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by illumin8 ( 148082 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:11PM (#6060446) Journal
    I work for one of the largest Unix vendors out there (hint, we used to put the . in .bomb).

    Anyway, I can tell you that in one of my many Unix classes when we were learning how to configure IPv6 the instructor mentioned that the reason why IPv6 had been added by default to our new versions of Unix was that we were getting a tremendous amount of pressure from our customers overseas, primarily in Asian markets, who were unable to get IPv4 address blocks from their ISPs, and were therefore deploying IPv6 exclusively.

    I believe currently a lot of Asia is running IPv6 with IPv4 gateways at main NAPs.

    -obdisclaimer, the opinions expressed are not those of my employer.

  • Asia (Score:3, Funny)

    by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot@spamgoe ... minus herbivore> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:12PM (#6060453) Homepage
    But I thought the Internet was "America Online"?

  • IPv6 adoption (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Vector7 ( 2410 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:13PM (#6060461) Journal
    Is it just me, or does no one really seem to care about adopting IPv6? The free software community has done a pretty admirable job implementing IPv6 and modifying things to work with it. If the world switched tomorrow, linux users would probably be the first ones up and running. Meanwhile, people like Microsoft sit on their asses until all the IP addresses run out and a real crisis develops.

    So, maybe it will be the Asian countries that finally push IPv6 toward being adopted. OTOH, in countries like China, maybe the government would be happier if 1+ billion people were forced behind NAT and a handful of filtering proxies due to lack of free addresses. =p

    • Re:IPv6 adoption (Score:4, Informative)

      by caluml ( 551744 ) <slashdot@spamgoe ... minus herbivore> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:28PM (#6060658) Homepage
      I agree with you. I work pretty much purely over IPv6 now. I can administer our entire network with IPv6.
      I keep banging the IPv6 drum, but people are naturally lazy, and don't want to change unless they have to. It explains the Microsoft/Linux thing too - people can't be bothered to try it, as MS works, to a fashion.

      Unfortunately, this lack of IPv6 adoption is due to Microsoft. As 90% of the online-population can't use it, the people running the services can't be bothered to support it. And while there aren't any decent services on IPv6, the impetus to upgrade it is low.

      Windows XP users: ipv6 install
      RedHat: http://gk.umtstrial.co.uk/~calum/ipv6-intro/ [umtstrial.co.uk]

      I think it can be all summed up by asking: Why don't you make all the sites you administer IPv6 only? Because then most of your audience wouldn't be able to see it.

      • Unfortunately, this lack of IPv6 adoption is due to Microsoft.

        Actually, it's more due to the monumentally stupid design decision of not making IPv4 addresses a strict subset of IPv6 addresses, with the result that you have to have tunnels etc to communicate between an IPv6 host or client and an IPv4 host or client.

    • Re:IPv6 adoption (Score:4, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:43PM (#6060813)
      of course not. Home owners want to use their routers and router manus have no desire to support IPv6 (as it would be nearly pointless to have NAT routers).

      ISPs really don't want to support IPv6 because then they can't charge for additional IPs or blocks of IPs. They also can't force you not to have your own reverse DNS (as ALL the ISPs I have ever used have denied me).

      I am currently using Comcast cable. I have an IPv6 address space through he.net. I have my own reverse DNS and I can actually show off my leet vanity hosts on IRC.

      Win9x doesn't support IPv6 except through a PAYFOR version of Winsock (what home user is going to do that and when is MS going to add support, yeah, never.)

      So if Win9x isn't supported, ISPs don't want it supported, home networking devices aren't going to support it (most home routers just drop the packets, I had to go back to using Linux as my NAT in order to enable IPv6), how is it going to get adopted?

    • Re:IPv6 adoption (Score:4, Informative)

      by rplacd ( 123904 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:50PM (#6061416) Homepage

      If the world switched tomorrow, linux users would probably be the first ones up and running.

      Wrong. Linux is nowhere near as IPv6-friendly as the *BSDs. To enable IPv6 in FreeBSD, for example, put 'ipv6_enable="YES"' in /etc/rc.conf and reboot. It'll autoconfig based on router advertisements, etc. You also have the option of enabling it at install time, so you can install over IPv6.

      Each FreeBSD CD comes with a bunch prebuilt IPv6-ready apps, like apache, wget, etc -- apps that don't have native IPv6 support. Linux distributions are way behind when it comes to IPv6 adoption.

      AEven Microsoft is on the bandwagon here. XP shipped with a "dev release" of their IPv6 code, and service pack 1 upgraded that to a production-ready release. To enable it, type "ipv6 install" at a command prompt, and you're set (no need to reboot!). The new 2003 server release comes with production quality IPv6 code as well.

      • Re:IPv6 adoption (Score:4, Informative)

        by Jordy ( 440 ) <.moc.pacons. .ta. .nadroj.> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @07:06PM (#6062036) Homepage
        Let's take Redhat 9; to enable IPv6 you have to go into /etc/sysconfig/network and stick the line 'NETWORKING_IPV6="yes"' in, then restart networking with 'service network restart.'

        This same config file also will set auto tunneling 6to4, forwarding, router setup, etc. It is about as easy as you can get.

        The Redhat CDs have IPv6 enabled applications and many patched apps as well. It even installs ping6, traceroute6, etc. by default for goodness sakes.

        There are some pieces of IPv6 Linux is missing, but don't make it seem like there isn't any support. Linux currently is missing 6over4 (different from 6to4), proper TOS bit handling, IPsec ESP transport and AH tunneling modes (AH transport works), full mobility support (supposedly almost there) and a couple other minor things.

  • china only needs one (Score:3, Funny)

    by ashultz ( 141393 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:13PM (#6060463)

    China wants to filter the entire internet anyway, so they might as well only use one and point it at the Great Firewall of China.

    I'm envisioning a billion little linksys router boxes glued together like bricks.

  • To put things inter perspective.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by BillYak ( 119143 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:13PM (#6060471) Homepage
    MIT has its own Class A subnet, which is 16 million (!) IPs. (Compared to 22mil of all of China.)

    As does Microsoft, Cisco, and Apple. And I'm sure a lot of other big names.

    Do all of those organizations use all of their IPs? Of course not. Relatively, probably more along the lines of "very few" or "negligable."

    Sure it is an incentive for IPv6 implementation, but that is not the point. America is wasting a whole lot of IPs, and other parts of the world are running out.

  • No... (Score:3, Funny)

    by weston ( 16146 ) <westonsd@@@canncentral...org> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:15PM (#6060488) Homepage
    If IPv6 is actually adopted before the heat-death of the universe, we'll probably be running out of IP addresses for Mars.

  • Maybe they should limit them! (Score:5, Funny)

    by mhore ( 582354 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:16PM (#6060502)
    Only 1 per family.

    *ducks*

  • Japan can have some of our IP addresses... (Score:3, Funny)

    by ibbie ( 647332 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:16PM (#6060510) Journal
    ...when they start releasing their US-version video games and anime in a more timely manner. :D

  • Korea wasteful of IP addresses (Score:4, Funny)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:17PM (#6060522) Journal
    Of course, Asia's problem is entirely unrelated to Korea handing out blocks of 64 numbers to elementary schools, blocks of 128 to middle schools, etc.

    Have they not heard of NAT?

  • IP Evolution (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tarsi210 ( 70325 ) * <nathan AT nathanpralle DOT com> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:20PM (#6060562) Homepage Journal
    It's just IP Evolution, folks.

    Why hasn't IPv6 been adopted yet? Because it's expensive to switch, or a pain in the ass, or both, or people are stubborn, or....There's a million reasons, some better than others.

    However, this is the sort of thing that you will see and will enable IPv6 to come into use. Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well, we have the invention, now we just need the necessity. Running out of IP space? Sounds like a good necessity to me!

    I'm not really worried about it. They'll either NAT it or they'll switch. If they switch (which I hope they do), it'll just encourage more of the world to do so. The market embraces the greater of a) what makes sense or b) what people are using. Evolution in action.

  • What he said... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by randomErr ( 172078 ) <.ervin.kosch. .at. .gmail.com.> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:22PM (#6060599) Journal
    Everyone is saying they should convert to IPv6.

    We all know that Asian countries should convert to IPv6. The better question is will they?

    The answer is and overwhelming No. Most organizations will convert to NAT and release some of thier B classes. Others will switch to pre-existing, non-IP based, protocals with cheap interfaces like token ring(Think Novell and IPX). A handful of companies will setup a IPv6 router that will tunnel thier IPv4 traffic.

    With the recession no one, especially Asian countries, has the money or time to convert.

    • Re:What he said... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Eric Smith ( 4379 ) *
      Others will switch to pre-existing, non-IP based, protocals with cheap interfaces like token ring(Think Novell and IPX).
      Surely you jest. No one in their right mind would switch from IP to non-IP protocols at this point, and even if they did, they certainly wouldn't need to switch to Token Ring to do it. Token Ring is dead, dead, dead! And good riddance!

    • Then (Score:3, Insightful)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      why are vendors being pressured by Asian companies to supply IPv6 compatibility with new products?

      Why is MS pushing the IPv6 compatibility of there new operating systems so hard in China?

      Most new applicable hardware supports both IPv4 and 6

      Don't underestimate the forward and long term planning of the Chinese.

  • NAT China (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:26PM (#6060631)
    China, for example, was assigned 22 million IP addresses (for a population of 1.3 billion)

    Given that China has already firewalled the whole country, why don't they just NAT the whole country as well. Then, with a little cleverness, they can have the whole address space available to them alone.

  • Crazy size of the IPv6 address space... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by patniemeyer ( 444913 ) * <pat@pat.net> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:27PM (#6060645) Homepage
    I did the following fun calculations once for a book I was working on (let me know if they're wrong):

    There are about six billion people on earth and each person's body consists of about 100 trillion cells. With 128 bit addressing each individual cell in every human being could have 100 trillion addresses. I believe that is on par with 1 address per molecule.

    To put it another way we cannot, with current technology, use all of these addresses in any physical way. We can't even count them (literally). Suppose you have a machine that can do a trillion operations per second; then suppose that you have a billion such machines connected via the Internet and we ask each one to simply start counting through part of the address space. I believe it will take about 3 billion years for them to finish.

    Pat Niemeyer
    Author of Learning Java, O'Reilly & Associates and the BeanShell Java scripting language.

    • Re:Crazy size of the IPv6 address space... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spaceyhackerlady ( 462530 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:55PM (#6060935)
      There are about six billion people on earth and each person's body consists of about 100 trillion cells. With 128 bit addressing each individual cell in every human being could have 100 trillion addresses. I believe that is on par with 1 address per molecule.

      A necessary number: number of IPV6 addresses is 2**128 = 3.4E38.

      Hmmm...lessee now, 6E9 people, 1E14 cells per person, that makes 6E23 cells. That's about 5E14 IPV6 addresses (five hundred trillion) per cell.

      Per molecule? Let's assume an average person's mass is 60 kg, and that the average molecular weight of the human body is 25 (we are mostly water). That makes (60 * 1000) / 25 * 6.02E23 = 1.4E27 molecules per person. Total Earth population is then 6E9 * 1.4E27 = 8.4E36 molecules. Actually about 40 addresses per molecule.

      My other favourite number is how many IPV6 addresses each square micron of the Earth's surface could have:

      Earth's surface area in square microns = 4 pi (6378 * 1000 * 1000000) ** 2 = 5.1E26

      3.4E38 / 5.1E26 = 6.6E11

      A big number!

      ...laura

  • Will IPV6 really solve this? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:33PM (#6060706) Homepage
    I'm not sure if IPv6 will solve anything. It seems to me that the whole concept of "IP addressing" seems quite archaic. The international telephone system doesn't need to 'dish out' phone numbers between countries - each country has its own country code, and everything else is handled wihin the country.

    Hell. The whole concept of the 'internet' by means of Tcp/IP is becoming quite dated. Why can't we combine the domain naming system with the IP system. What I would propose is to give each computer on a given domain an alphanumeric name (can contain any type of characters, and is decided by the owner of the domain - basically the same as todays concept of a 'hostname'. The domains, in turn, are managed by an independent organization in each country, followed by a country code. For example, a sample address would be
    Joe Smith@Earthlink@USA (users within the USA can leave the @USA blank)

    this eliminates the need for a domain naming system. takes a lot of power away from ICANN, would help to solve cybersquatting, and provides an infinite number of computer addresses (at no point should the 'name' need to be translated into a numeric address.

    Computers behind a router should be able to have their own address as well (multiple servers on one address without the mess of port forwarding! With many home users now running their own web/music servers, this could be a godsend. For example:
    MediaServer@JohnSmith@Earthlink@USA

    Anybody should be able to get their domain, but those who do not have their own should simply share one with their ISP.

    Unix geeks will probably balk at my radical ideas. but it needs to be done. the numbered IP system was concieved when the only computers on the 'net were run by the people who wrote the protocols,. Nowindays, computers are used by everybody (and their grandmothers!). and it made sense too, as bandwidth was very limited, and the programmers never intended for so many computers to be on the net, and cut corners to gain a small speed advantage (a few bits per packet - which was a lot back then. now, it's nothing). IPv6 simply continued to use (longer) archaic addresses - the problem still exists; we need another layer for domain names, and it's confusing as hell to non-geeky types)

    I know my ideas seem radical, and will probably never be accepted... but I certainly would hope that we fix some of this. IPv6 isn't a solution - it's avoiding the problem.

    (yes, this was somewhat inspired by Apple's rendevous, which addresses many of my concerns, but is by no means acceptable for a worldwide scale. On a side note, I believe that in order for rendevous to succeed, Apple needs to open it up, and allow M$ and Linux to interoperate with it.)

  • IPv6 + NATPT (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nsayer ( 86181 ) <`moc.ufk' `ta' `reyasn'> on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:36PM (#6060738) Homepage
    The migration path, in general, is to use DNS proxies and NATPT to make the transition appear to IPv6 users to be instantaneous.

    I did this a while ago at my house. My network actually had no IPv4 on it at all for a few weeks. I stopped because a couple of applications didn't support IPv6 and because the KAME NATPT I grafted into my FreeBSD source tree broke. I did it sort of as a proof of concept, and it succeeded sufficiently for me to propose that IPv6-only ISPs could easily use the technique.

    You first set up a DNS proxy. totd (Trick or Treat Daemon) is a good one. Its job is to turn requests for AAAA records into requests for AAAA or A records, and to translate A record replies into AAAA records with a special prefix tacked on to the high bits. This will make it look as though the whole IPv4 Internet is hidden inside of a special /96 prefix.

    Coincidently, you route that /96 prefix into a NATPT. IPv6 packets go in, IPv4 packets come out and are sent to the IPv4 Internet as if they had gone through a NAT.

    Having done this, all of the ISPs customers would see a complete IPv6-only Inernet, but they could still interact with legacy (IPv4) sites as if they were IPv6. As more and more ISPs convert over, the IPv4 network will simply shrink slowly until it's gone, but in the meantime remain as accessable as it currently is.

    With such a transition plan in place, the more people who move to IPv6, the emptier the IPv4 Internet experience becomes (however, folks trapped with IPv4 only providers could use techniques like 6to4 to escape the legacy network), which in turn becomes the driving force for transition.

    So, Enough stories are turning up... When is /. going to support IPv6?

    • Re:IPv6 + NATPT (Score:5, Informative)

      by Lxy ( 80823 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:14PM (#6061125) Journal
      When is /. going to support IPv6?

      I love IPv6. I've played with it in the lab, and it's nifty! I'm in charge of restructuring my company's IP layout, guess what I suggested. Interestingly enough, when I proposed my plan on #ipv6 on freenode, the answer was a resounding DON'T DO IT. I have too much legacy stuff laying around that just won't support IPv6. Funny thing is, we are doing well on technology. I think of all the other businesses in worse shape than us, and I start to think. There is no way in hell IPv6 migration will happen any time soon. It's sometimes hard for us to see, especially when we do transparent stuff at home. What we forget is all the weird hardware that companies still depend on. There is some stuff that just won't go. We bought a Cisco router 3 years ago, its IOS won't support IPv6. That's only 3 years ago! Think of the legacy crap that was installed 10 years ago that still runs! NT servers that no one upgrades because they still work. We still have a Windows 3.1 machine that does its job, and in fact we broke trying to upgrade! Still works, it's easier to leave it alone. This kind of stuff happens everywhere, I've seen plenty of businesses with old hardware that's costly to upgrade and not broken.

      IPv6 is great in the lab, and with brand new networks it's wonderful. Too much legacy hardware is going to keep it from being adopted on a large scale, and it won't happen anytime soon.

  • Well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:38PM (#6060763)
    Technically, nobody "OWNS" Ip addresses; it is a convention we all adhere to and everything works together.

    If, say, China just took a few class A spaces belonging to companies they don't care about in the US, and started using them internally, and even if a few other countries started agreeing with them, there would be no problem. As long as you don't go announcing routes to others in violation of how they want to do things, you are fine.

    Nothing at the IANA forces anyone to use a certain address; they don't controll routing.. they just say who owns what, and those with the power to route defer to that to decide if they should do something or not.

  • Perhaps NAT is a solution (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @04:40PM (#6060774) Homepage Journal
    I dont see IP6 happening anytime soon, perhaps if they enforce NAT connections for everyone they can extend the lifetime a bit...

    True it sucks to be stuck behind firewalls but its better then nothing..

  • Greed is why we are short on addresses (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Halvard ( 102061 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:11PM (#6061099)

    Yep, plain and simple. Why else would IBM and Harvard each still have a couple of class A's or somesuch. Inertia? Sure they were around early in the days of arpanet or near.net or fsf.net, etc., but they don't need that many addresses. Really, both could get away with private addresses on approximately (I'm making this number up arbitrarily) 90& of their networks and probably more. MIT's up there for address space as well.

    Someone is going to chime in with I'm clearly wrong, not in an enterprise environment, or some such. Well I own and run an ISP. We light office buildings, no one has a public IP (well, some have static NAT'd addresses) so we can get away with using a fraction of the IP addresses we normally need. We are living proof that the number of addresses required really is a fraction of what most organizations use.

    No one likes losing addresses from their netblock assignment. However, there is a greater good here. The technological haves or early adopters have grossly disproportionate assignments. Large numbers of organizations switching over to RFC 1918 blocks and NATing would solve much of the address shortage. It would have a side benefit of additional security as well.

  • Another sign of rock and roll excesses (Score:5, Funny)

    by c13v3rm0nk3y ( 189767 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:23PM (#6061215) Homepage
    Asia Running Out Of IP Addresses

    What the hell is a prog-rock super-band [asiaworld.org] from the 80's doing with 22 million IP addresses?

    Do they give them away to groupies with the backstage passes? Did entire blocks come free with the purchase of an lp? Were they traded for drugs and amps that go up to "11"?

    This kind of rock n' roll excess is just so sad.

  • IPv6 is fundamentally broken ... wait for IPv7 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @05:28PM (#6061256) Homepage

    IPv6 is fundamentally broken. The routing system for it does not scale to the same level the address space does. There are enough addresses for everyone to have their own portable /64 assignment (if not larger), but IPv6 can't handle the routing. The routing technology was not improved to scale up, even though it could have been done (although I don't know if it can be done with the way IPv6 was designed). But that's not a valid excuse for not having scalable routing as the IP layer structure could have been designed to allow for it. Wedging another layer in below IP for IPv6 might also work, but I think we would be better off waiting for a clean re-design, perhaps to be called IPv7 (and pushing them to hurry up with it).

    If you don't believe me, just post a call for portable address assignments in IPv6 for everyone. You're get plenty of responses saying that the routing can't handle it. And that is the problem.

  • OK, a thought here (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dacarr ( 562277 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @06:13PM (#6061607) Homepage Journal
    Everybody is saying that IPv6 is gonna solve world hunger (at least, as far as IP addresses goes). But here's the thing - has Microsoft adopted it, and accordingly made Windoze whatever compatible? Last I checked, this wasn't the case.

    Yes, I know, IPv6 is backward compatible, but let's not confuse the higher-ups with the facts. Just hear me out, 'k?

    Microsoft enters the picture for one good reason: they are still the leading provider of operating systems. Most people still run Windows, and if indeed Microsoft is not IPv6 ready, you're going to alienate most of the users on the 'net.

    OK, fine, blab all you want about the merits of Suzie Luser not being able to send emails full of run-on sentences, punctuation errors!!!!, and speling and errors grammatically to suzielusersmom13498572349657@aol.com, but consider this - ISPs such as AOL, Earthlink, Speakeasy, SBC, etc., etc., ad nauseam accordingly won't move to IPv6 when their primary customer base is still stuck in IPv4. There's just no need to make the expenditure right now because it doesn't affect them right now.

  • All of Pakistan was under ONE IP address (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mnmn ( 145599 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @07:14PM (#6062147) Homepage

    Some time ago, PakNet was the biggest ISP in Pakistan serving hundereds of thousands under ONE ip address... interestingly using Linux kernel version 1.3.x. I also remember every user had a shell account from which we could cat the /etc/passwd, which was not surprisingly humungous. For a while, BrainNet and PakNet were the only ISPs in Pakistan, and later ISPs could only connect to Paknet, and their single monolithic IP address. I remembed always being banned from IRC servers which were blocking users by their IP addresses. Talk about one huge NAT and this is the biggest Muslim country in the world.

    And on this side, here in Toronto, Bell assigns a subnet of 8 IPs to every customer, including ones who need just one. 3 of those IPs are gateway, broadcast and 00 host, which leaves 5 IPs. two of them are assigned to the on-site router and off-site routers which are connected via DSL. Its one of the best examples of IP address waste, while the Chinese crave a personal, their very own IP address!

    Theoretically all of the more than 4 billon IP addresses can be used, and it is VERY unlikely that the whole worlds population would be online. But the imbalance remains with the US holdin on to all the Oil and IP addresses. At least we can do something about one of them.

  • Try and get IPv6 support from your ISP (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jroysdon ( 201893 ) on Wednesday May 28, 2003 @10:01PM (#6063536)
    I called up my ADSL provider, SBC (formerly PacBell): Took 4 people before I finally had someone who know what the difference was between IPv4 and IPv6. No plans to offer it anytime soon. No demand, customers aren't asking for it (I was the first, they claimed).

    I called up my T1 providers at work - MCI/UUNET and Sprint. Neither one offer production IPv6 services. Sprint was offering tunneling to a test-bed IPv6 network (on the 6BONE), but I've emailed the contact 3 times, no reply. Same with UUNET, I emailed the US-UUNET 6BONE contacts, no reply. I did actually get a reply from the South Africa UUNET contact (funny thing is I know him from Shadowfire IRC).

    You simply cannot convert to IPv6 here in the US without using the private IPv6 ranges (akin to IPv4 RFC1918 address space). Why? Because only ISPs get IPv6 address space, and then they are to assign it to sub-ISPs and/or businesses.

    Actually, I take that back, if you want to pay for a T1 all the way to one of Hurrican Electric's sites, you can get native IPv6:
    ipv6.he.net [he.net].

    I've been using he.net's IPv6 tunnels to them for about 6 months. Mainly though, I set up tunnels between my sites, so the traffic isn't really flowing to he.net's network. Think of it as a VPN, but with globally unique IPv6 addresses (which you can access from any host that can get on the IPv6 backbone or tunnel via IPv4 to an IPv6 backbone).

    So, everyone, email or call your ISP and tell them you'd like to get IPv6 address space.

    But here's a thought, why should they spend the time and money to upgrade their infrastructure when what they have "works just fine" right now? Are you willing to pay more per month for your own IPv6 address space? I currently pay $15 more per month for my 5 (technically 9) static IPs from SBC. I'd trade those statics for a single IPv4 address and a IPv6 /64. I wouldn't pay even more for just IPv6 so long as there are free IPv6 tunnel brokers and I've got static IPv4 addresses to tunnel with.
  • My fav bit... "Perhaps IPv6 will solve the problem."

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