IP Address Shortage 222
webslacker wrote in
to send us a news.com story that talks about the upcoming
IP Address Shortage.
Talks about IPv6 and other related topics. Nothing
phenomonal, but its interesting... how many class C's do we
have left anyway?
Re:And then.... (Score:1)
Re:And then.... (Score:1)
It shouldn't... all "internet appliances" can connect through a single gateway using NAT or IP Masquerading, meaning you're still only using 1 IP address per household...
Address classes have been gone for a while... (Score:1)
According to the CIDR FAQ [rain.net] It has been in use since 94/95.
We've been running out of IPs for years, this is ancient news.
-- Britt
Some numbers (Score:1)
The Class A portion of the number space represents
50% of the total IP host addresses; Class B is 25%
of the total; Class C is approximately 12% of the
total.
Total Allocated (1993)
Class A 126 38%
Class B 16383 45%
Class C 2097151 2%
I don't know what the current numbers are, but 50% of the total
address spaces is still unassigned. Most in the Class A.
A Dylan language hacker.
Re:Only 10% of the IP addresses are used? (Score:1)
> really only 3 levels of address allocation --
> class C (2**8 addresses), class B (2**16
> addresses) and class A (2**24 addresses)
Classed addressing was replaced in 94/95 with CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) None of this is relevant/correct now.
-- Britt
CIDR (Score:1)
But they charge for static IPs! (Score:1)
Take a look at any local computer paper and note what ISPs are charging for static IPs. They are charging for NUMBERS folks!
Look, dynamic IP assignment for dial-up PPP is broken. Everyone with a $20 AOL account should be given an IP address, and use that address when they dial in. Why don't ISPs do this? Because there aren't enough addresses. To this day it pisses me off that internet phone applications have to go through a server to know whether you are online because my IP address changes every time I dial up.
Wake up and smell the IPV6.
Ken
Y'all must be sysadmins (Score:1)
NATs are evil (Score:1)
A better world will be IPv6 everywhere, with IPsec everywhere.
There is no IP address shortage (Score:3)
IPv6 Has Non-Routable Addresses (Score:1)
IPv6 implies a level of object addressability that is, frankly, scary to anyone who has an iota of sense. You'll pry my non-routable addresses from my cold, dead hands.
According to the IPv6 Addressing Architecture ( RFC2373 [isi.edu]) section 2.5.8, there are plenty of non-routable IPv6 addresses. They're called "link-local" and "site-local" addresses, and each group has more addresses in it than the entire IPv4 address space.
This again? (Score:4)
This won't last us indefinately, if we get 250 real IP addresses per household we would run out. On the other hand, the only sane way to give every gadget, appliance, outlet and lightswitch in a house its own IP address is to use the 10.0.0.0/8 network, so it's not an issue for the rest of the world. IPv6 is still the best long term solution (just like it was 2-3 years ago). What's the hold up? It works, all decent OS's support it natively, when are the backbone providers going to start swithching, and encouraging their clients to switch?
Re:Only 10% of the IP addresses are used? (Score:1)
The real pain of the IP address crunch felt today (Score:1)
It seems that the IP address situation is prompting many of the large Fortune-500 type companies to renumber their networks with 10.0.0.0 or other reserved network numbers, and employ proxies and/or NAT. That's all fine and good for them, but makes my life hell. The company I work for does, among other things, software maintentance. For our large customers, this usually means mainaining a frame relay or other semi-permanent connection into their networks. One of our customers just converted their network over to 10.0.0.0 numbers a few weeks ago, and this morning another customer notified me that they would be doing the same in a few weeks. I now get to try to manage access to two different networks with the same IP addresses.
Re:The real pain of the IP address crunch felt tod (Score:1)
Bleh.. (Score:1)
Things change too fast.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
Internal numbering? (Score:1)
Aside from the thrill of being able to ping your toaster from work/school, I don't see of what use an Internet IP would be for things as worthless as household appliances. Most uses of these devices require human interaction (toaster, fridge, etc.), so remote control of them shouldn't be a big priority.
Besides, I don't fancy the idea of my vacuum cleaner sucking in its own ethernet cable and bursting into flames.
Re:Fire Insurance, Fire Detector, Firewall (Score:1)
Re:IPs are low, allright (Score:1)
64? IPv6 gets you 128 bits.
-----------------------------
Computers are useless. They can only give answers.
I think you're missing the main problem... (Score:3)
The main problem is that with such a distribution of IP addresses, the routers are having to keep more routes in memory. We're not really near running out of numbers, but if we have to assign two (or more) numerically unrelated blocks of IP addresses to a location, we aren't using the addresses efficiently, and the routers are going to bog down more and more with many routes going to the same place.
To summarize: We have a sufficient quantity of IP addresses for the near future. The problem we are encountering is that routers operate more efficiently if the IP addresses are under-utilized.
That is why we need IPv6 and it's insane number of IP addresses. If we can assign IP's without regard to efficiency of quantity, we can more easily aggregate routes efficiently, reducing maybe 12 routes into one route to a honkin huge set of IP's (which still would be less than a fraction of a percent of the available set of IP's)
ARIN (Score:1)
-Peter
Re:Protocols (Score:1)
It also sucks if you use rfc1918 space for your wan interfaces - it confuses traceroutes a *lot* if they return identical numbering for interfaces on routers for 2 (or more) different ISP's!
-Peter
The complete list of Class A's (Score:2)
(This link was blatantly stolen from Scripting News, but I figured it should be seen)
"Big Entities Stash Net Adresses" (Score:2)
Basically, we aren't really going to run out of addresses anytime soon, as long as someone forces companies like Halliburton to use the right address space for their 30k hosts.
(link cross-polinated from Scripting News - www.scripting.com)
Re:Protocols (Score:1)
IPv6 never going to happen (Score:1)
Re:Don't forget the class E addresses (Score:1)
For that, IPv6 is the way to go.
Re:Protocols (Score:1)
With respect to your second idea, using "TCP/IP" with a single "household" IP and using port numbers to differentiate between devices: What if someone had a really big house? (Granted, 64k of ports is probably plenty, but you never know...) What if we're talking about a company, where 64k ports might not be enough? What if some of those ports were needed for outbound connections? Do we then start assigning a second or third IP for these types of devices?
What if a single device had several services? Use a separate port for each service? Would there be standard ports for things like TV, VCR, Pool, Telephone, etc? What if you had multiple TV's? Things could get very confusing here, but there are probably ways to classify and place these mappings in some sort of standard directory.
Also (and this might clarify some confusion for you, or you may have meant this and are just using wrong terminology), we're not necessarily saying devices need to be able to communicate via *TCP*.. just IP. We can build any other protocols or use existing protocols as needed for the devices themselves...
Nope (Score:1)
Re:How many class C's left? (Score:1)
Did I miss something?
Re:Fire Insurance, Fire Detector, Firewall (Score:1)
Re:notation (Score:1)
The 18 class A represented in IPv6 would look like 0:0:0:0:0:0:18.x.y.z (or
Or were you just picking random numbers here? I'm getting the feeling that I'm taking what you said a bit more seriously than you meant it. Heh. If so, I apologize. I guess I'm just confused.
But yah, I sympathize with you losing your 1/255 status.
Re:Fire Insurance, Fire Detector, Firewall (Score:1)
When people say refrigerators and televisions will have an IP address, they don't mean that these devices will be *capable* of being broken into. You can work up a very simple network device that simply reports temperature information or allows the user to change the TV channel without allowing a criminal to insert some sort of virus into the system or program your microwave oven to explode.
Simple devices will have simple network services provided by simple programming.
And in response to the idea that people can just use port forwarding or some similar technology to get around the restrictions imposed by NAT, remember that these devices are *appliances* and won't necessarily be running in the home of a computer person. Not everyone is a network administrator.
Re:Fire Insurance, Fire Detector, Firewall (Score:1)
However, using NAT like this precludes the possibility of me being able to easily do things like:
* IP-based telephone calls to a specific phone in someone else's house
* *Forwarding* IP-based telephone calls to the nearest telephone in whatever building I'm currently in
* Reception/sending of video images from one specific camera to a specific display unit in another location
* Easy collection of thermostat temperatures for apartment buildings with central A/C / heat.
* Sending text-based messages to specific devices in another building
etc.
Granted, there can be ways of setting up proxies or the like in conjunction with your NAT setup, but we'd effectively need to build another entire layer of software to make devices work transparently.
Re:implementing IPv6 (Score:1)
Maybe I'm just being naïve. *shrug* It just seems to me that once we have IPv6-capable routers, we can migrate everything else at our own individual pace. Once that's all done, we just drop our IPv4 addresses in favor of our IPv6 addresses...
Re:Fire Insurance, Fire Detector, Firewall (Score:3)
And if it already speaks IP, why not let them communicate over the Internet as needed while we're at it?
10.x.x.x addresses seem like a good idea (my network at home uses this), but what if you wanted to check your answering machine messages from a neighbor's house? What if you wanted to record the game that comes on in 20 minutes? I'm probably only pointing out some of the lesser reasons why these devices might need a "real" IP, but IMO they're enough.
Re:The scarcity is still just "approaching" (Score:4)
The transition from IPv4 -> IPv6 should be totally transparent. Things like TCP and UDP should work under IP with no problems at all, since they don't themselves deal with things like IP addresses or quality-of-service.
IPv6 was designed from the drawing board to be an easy upgrade. IPv4-compatible address space was built-in, and the protocol itself is meant to allow hosts to inter-communicate between IPv4 and IPv6 hosts on mixed networks.
A "funky" (even if simple) multi-level proxy system as you say is simply a rather nasty band-aid. While something like this may work, it introduces a tremendous amount of complexity. You'd still need to have things like web servers, e-mail gateways, etc., on globally visible IP's, and there are useful reasons to have individual PC's visible as well. Behind NAT, you lose a lot of usefulness out of Internet hosts. If such usefulness isn't a factor (such as on networks where the machines are already firewalled into next-to-nothingness), this is probably fine, and using private addresses with NAT is acceptable (and even desirable).
The scarcity is still just "approaching" (Score:1)
On the other hand, the hording of IP ranges is really enormous, I think no company of any size (well, except those who provide access for end-users) should use anything more than a handful externally visible IP addresses, 256 (a class C) at most. Not just the grandfathered class A owners mentioned in the article are grossly unused, there are many class C and even class B ranges which are unreachable except for a router. Big corporate networks don't want you to reach them, you know...
But unless everything is at least as accessable as today, no proxy systems should be forced to the customers, IMHO.
implementing IPv6 (Score:1)
Making "my" DIY Linux box speak IPv6 is easy; converting some real applications to let it use it fully is workable too, but there are so many places out there that I'm simply scared :) Lot of cable modems, lot of printers, lot of routers, leaf hosts with Win 3.1, MacOS, Amiga, and the uncountable rest with hard to upgrade software/firmware. Agreed, it's only the core what's really need to be upgraded, for example, LAN printers, and most end hosts will do fine with IPv4. I also know the measures taken to have IPv4-IPv6 networks to talk together; but it sometimes sounds hopelessly tedious to me.
Although, the biggest mental obstacle was that getting IPv6 networks was quite of limited to experimental educational usage, I'm glad it's just a few days and it's more available.
The proxy system: sounds much funkier than I imagine, but I just didn't have the time to even mentally design it correctly; I still think it could be easy, but let's drop it :)
The Options (Score:1)
2) Use IPv6 and solve every problem on the net today.
Re:Have you read the specs? (Score:1)
You have an IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack machine accepting connections for a non-existant IPv4 address. The packet is re-written in IPv6 notation and forwarded to the -real- IPv6 machine.
Re:Internal numbering? (Score:1)
That's a lot of books and owners to connect together, and keep track of.
Then, there's the contents of your SO's pocket book. You expect your SO to know what's in there? Or what isn't in there? Or where those things which should be in there but aren't are?
The ability to tag each object, ROUTABLY, and be able to traceroute those objects to establish roughly where they are and who's they are, would be a VERY valuable tool.
Also beats the Ultra Violet marker pens for marking your brand-new, expensive electronics against thieves.
("Help! Help! My $300,000 video recorder, with a borrowed tape from a friend was stolen!"
"What're their FQDN's?" "vidrec.myhouse.org" and "ripoff.localvids.com"
"Ok, we're following them with Mobile IP. They're on the main road, going north. UGH! That one's eating a garlic sandwich! I can't believe someone would bite into that address range.")
Being able to track things through routable addressing is a VERY powerful tool.
Re:Question: is ipv6 "plug and play". (Score:1)
IPv6 Addresses (Score:1)
It's called the 6Bone, and ALL you need to is contact the nearest 6Bone provider and ask for a name.
Addresses on IPv6 are NEVER allocated by humans, they are GENERATED. THAT is why nobody can hand them out. ALL you can have is one or two bytes allocated by the person one hop up in the heirarchy.
EVERYTHING BEFORE is pre-generated and no authority can change that. EVERYTHING AFTER is generated by your computer, according to the specs on how the number is generated.
Re:Have you read the specs? (Score:1)
Re:This again? (Score:1)
IPv6 URLs (Score:1)
www.6bone.net [6bone.net]
Does it matter how many IPv4 addresses are left? (Score:1)
If two logically adjacent addresses do NOT belong to logically adjacent physical ports, you MUST store a router entry for each.
I don't CARE whether people think routing is "broken" or not. If you cannot generalise where to send data, at ANY level, then you must store EACH AND EVERY addresss and where it is. This leads to HUGE, UNWEILDY search tables, a VERY HIGH probability of corruption, and UNNECESSARY LAG.
eg: Let's take two possibilities.
This happens, in real life - there are plenty of companies that loan out dedicated terminals to their databases, with a company IP address, rather than an address of a machine local to where it's being sited. That address needs to be added to EVERY router between the two sites.
Tell me which is more efficient and less laggy.
Re:Do Both... (Score:2)
The reverse mapping (IPv6 addresses out of IPv4 ones) is slightly trickier, but certainly possible. Multihome a gateway, then have it route out the packets over the IPv6 segment of the network, with the address according to the IPv6 mapping of the name the gateway was called by. The translation becomes invisible and transparent to all parties.
EASY solution! (Score:3)
Result? For a competitor to get a product to work with AOL, it would HAVE to be IPv6 aware.
AOL's users would be utterly oblivious to the change - AOL's software would work the same and look the same, and they'd have access to exactly the same off-site systems, in the same way.
BUT, because it would be an IPv6 stack and an IPv6 service, any 3rd-party product would have to have IPv6 support. And, given the number of direct users of AOL, it would have to have IPv6 support by yesterday, or risk being squelched.
Re:ARIN (Score:1)
Re:charge for IP, !4 domain name, money -> IPv6 (Score:1)
NSI never charged for IP allocation. Actually, the IP allocation was funded by the domain registration fees, which prevented them from paying much attention to it.
Re:ARIN (Score:1)
Re:Registries = liars (Score:1)
When I started working at ARIN on 1998-11-23, there were no software requirements, no specs, nothing. Nada. Since then, one other engineer and myself have put together the software to process templates and update our database, provide IPv6 WHOIS functionality, and tools for the IP analysts to interact with the database directly.
As far as I know, no hard dates were ever given out. The biggest hold-up has always been, and continues to be, the IPv6 initial allocation policy. If you notice the complaints about the Class A's having been given out in the early days of IPv4, you may understand that getting allocation policy right actually is important!
Nevertheless, the message from the community has come through loud and clear at the RIPE meeting last week, for instance: "We don't care! Give me address space NOW!!!" So that's what's happening. Ready or not, here it comes.
Oh, a final FYI. There does need to be agreement on routing somewhere. Whether that's through a commercial entity, a government, or an entity like ARIN doesn't matter I suppose. But consider the implications of those three options, and maybe you'll see that we don't do such a bad job after all.
Shane Kerr
Software Engineer
ARIN
Re:ARIN Phantom Menace (Score:1)
Seriously though, if you look at the curves of IP usage and routing table growth from 1993 or 1994, you'll see that the exponential growth was curbed, even though the Internet has grown significantly since then. That's not an accident.
From my personal point of view, I do get aggrevated that I can't get a static IP from my provider, though. IPv6, take me away!
U.S. Conspiracy (Score:1)
All of these regional registries are open membership organizations, with public forums for comments and input. If you don't like it - join up! It's certainly not America using all the IP space by itself!
I suspect the problem in most cases is with the policies of the communication infrastructure (government and private) of the countries involved. Check it out before looking for the easy conspiracy theory.
IPv4 shortage, private addresses, and IPv6 (Score:2)
Internet Transparency [ietf.org]
It's a pretty good read. Anyway, ARIN should be offering IPv6 addresses the 17th (next Monday) unless politics and policy get in the way. The registration folks are testing my code today. :)
Make sure your ISP is ready! And don't settle for a /128!
Shane Kerr
Software Engineer
ARIN
Classful naming (Score:5)
Please stop using classful naming. Class A, B, and C really don't have much meaning these days. Use CIDR - it's more specific and just all-around better.
$0.10 Tutorial:
Class A is a
Class B is a
Class C is a
Single IP is a
There you go. I'm sure you can figure out how other networks are specified. For instance, the network slashdot is on is a
206.170.14.0/23
Isn't that better than saying "two class C's"?
Fire Insurance, Fire Detector, Firewall (Score:1)
Perhaps the next thing that needs to be done is to install a firewall in each house. That way each house can have 10.x.x.x for their IP numbers. 16 million should be enough IP's for any house
Re: Just How Many addresses does IPv6 have ? (Score:1)
--
Re:IP port numbers (Score:1)
Re:And then.... (Score:1)
But one of the nice things about IPv6 is it has scopes. No longer are there just "the Internet" and private networks, but there is a hierarchy of networks. I should reread the specs so I can remember what I'm talking about, but I thought it was a pretty good idea.
Huh? (Score:1)
Re:Have you read the specs? (Score:1)
Once all it becomes impractical to route to new IPv4 addresses (or we run out of them), then you'll have IPv6 machines with no legitimate IPv4 addresses, and people stuck on IPv4 clients or backbones will have some problems.
Have you read the specs? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, the reverse isn't quite true. i.e. if you're a server without an IPv4 address (you only have an IPv6 address), then IPv4 hosts will not be able to contact you AFAIK.
People should probably not count on never upgrading, though. I don't want to think about all the tech support calls coming in from people complaining about only being able to access a small chunk of Internet hosts, just because some unnamed operating system hasn't put IPv6 support in yet.
Again, this shows how the big companies screw up (Score:1)
Every now and then people whine about, how they could get more than the 4 or 8 IP's I'm willing to assign for them, and they explain, how they, if they went to a larger ISP could get an entire C-class, even though they'll only be using IP's for a router and a firewall.
People don't know, and don't want to know the possibilities of NAT.
How sad!
Re:Address classes have been gone for a while... (Score:1)
Re:Classful naming (Score:2)
Don't forget the class E addresses (Score:1)
But something that's always amazed me is that the address space from 240 to 247 is UNASSIGNED! They're reserved for future use... now people want to go to IPv6 instead of ever using those addresses. Why? Do they have cooties?
FreeS/WAN does IPsec fine through firewalls (Score:1)
http://www.xs4all.nl/~freeswan/freeswan_trees/f
Grrr... need dynamic port forwarding (Score:1)
It would be great to be able to have dynamic port forwarding (dunno how you'd distinguish which IP to forward to -- base it on the sequence number?) so that you could have two inbound streams to the same gateway, and have those streams demuxed to the appropriate IPs.
Reverse lookups on phone numbers (Score:1)
The really scary part is not the psychos. It's the direct mailing people. If they can doing reverse lookups, any time you phone someone up they can find your phone number from call return, get your address, and start compiling information on what you buy. Yes, and junk mail you. And link it to your credit rating. And .
No, what's really funny... (Score:1)
...are those companies who have hundreds of IP addresses with Web servers that just redirect to a central Web server, so the companies can spam search engines with porn site links.
By "restricting new Net machines," I hope you mean providing incentives for conservation measures like IP masquerading, private subnets, etc., or disincentives for wasteful usage (see above).
If you think getting a dedicated IP address for a cable modem is excessive... I just signed up for a new DSL line, and I was given the option of having up to eight IP addresses for it. (I took just one.)
Re:And then.... (Score:1)
The difficulty is in getting anyone to make the first move towards IPv6
Re:Don't forget the class E addresses (Score:1)
Re:The solution in Denver (Score:1)
Although I like the idea of breaking down the allocation blocks to a more useful size, here's what I was thinking. Add area codes based on the use of the number. Sometimes this is fairly clear, like for celphones and pagers. Other times it's quite tricky, like for modems and faxes (offer a slight discount for registered data numbers). Then just overlay them; landline voice would probably remain on the old AC, secondary services would get relegated out. (In the beginning you'd probably dump all non-landline voice together, and split it up later if necessary). Will the telcos do this? No, they're stupid.
Re:The solution in Denver (Score:1)
That is ALL cellphones, no matter who the provider is, get a particular area code. They can squabble over exchanges all they want, but they're all (123) xxx-xxxx or whatever. Datalines would be much the same (if you told them that it was a dataline, for they're unlikely to know otherwise). All data goes through area (256) for some given area, and exchanges or whatever get given out to everyone, including the primary telco. The 'default' code for the region (like 617 in Boston) is mixed-use, but with pressure to be voice landline only)
Dump non voice landline services all together, regardless of provider, into alternate codes.
Re:IPv6 (Score:1)
remaddr,remport,locaddr,locport, so this will be 2^96 simultaneous connections...
*SHOCK* (Score:1)
--
Re:CIDR (Score:1)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:Subnet IP's (Score:1)
Your point is _very_ well taken for the larger subnets though. For example, the IP address of this machine is 155.1.x.x, but it's completely firewalled. As far as I know, our company's network would be just as happy if this box had a 10.x.x.x address. There's a lot of other companies in a similar boat. Unfortunatly, now that there's a perceived value to IP addresses, no one wants to give them up.
I too would be interested to know just how many IP addresses are currently un-assigned.
Loopback uses too many IPs (Score:2)
The problem is plain simply that people did not see the internet growing the way it has when they released IP in the early 80s. Waste 16 million IP addresses for loopback? Sure, why not.
- Sam
Re:The real pain of the IP address crunch felt tod (Score:1)
I mean one customer can take 10.0.1-2.x, the other 10.0.3-4.x and so on
The solution in Minneapolis/Saint Paul.. (Score:1)
However, imagine you've got a business over in say Malaysia. You need only a few 20 extension groups for interfacing to your central PBX somewhere in America. Guess what, you not only get your 60 extensions, but you've got the entire block of 10000 numbers allocated to you. Why? Because that's the way the phone company does things. And we think the handing out of the original A's was ridiculous.
There IS a shortage (and some info on IPv6) (Score:2)
I can't possibly understand how all you people can manage to get C-class subnets, without having a _very_ good reason for it. Much less how you can possibly be disappointed with it!
Somebody up on the list wished there was an IPv6 initiative, and waited for somebody to "take the first step". I would just like to say: Wake up! The 6bone (a world-wide IPv6 network, using mainly IPv6-over-IPv4) has been running steady for quite a while now, and many equipment manufactorers (of them Cisco) do have close to production standard implementations. IPv6 will have enough addresses for everybody (a 128-bit address space... You usually get 64 or more bits, and usually use your Ethernet MAC address as the last 64 bits, to get autoconfiguration), and some extra neaties as well. I encourage everybody to join the 6bone (read the IPv6-HOWTO first, probably available at the LDP). It's free, and Linux has the support you need.
/* Steinar */
Solution: Use more ip-masquerading! (Score:2)
For example, FooBar Corp. grabs a class B so each of their computers can have an IP address. However, they only have a small handful of external servers and gateways. What they really should have done is gotten individual IP addresses from their ISP and used IP masquerading for all the internal computers. That way, computers that are behind their firewall aren't using "real" IP addresses.
charge for IP, !4 domain name, money -> IPv6 (Score:2)
AtW,
http://www.investigatio.com [investigatio.com]
Re:Only 10% of the IP addresses are used? (Score:3)
Way back when, most companies would just grab a class B, thinking "gee, I'll probably have more than 256 machines, the class B will give me room to grow". Of course, they only have maybe 1024 machines, so most of their address space ends up empty.
This has GOT to be the case with Ford, Eli Lilly, Merck, Mercedes Benz, and Prudential. I say we revoke their class As!
Re:Y'all must be sysadmins (Score:2)
I hesitate to suggest this, but NetBEUI seems to be a better fit for home networking. Fast (for 1Mbps lines), auto-configuring (no unix box in the corner) and non-routable (more secure). A simple box could connect with the Internet and transmit messages from TOASTER0123 to tracking.wonderbread.com or wherever. This box of course would need some intelligence to know how to handle messages, but I'm sure it could be worked out.
--
Re:All IPs cannot be used (Score:2)
Routing is a problem. (Score:3)
The problem isn't the amount of IP addresses, what it really comes down to is efficient routing. Lets say for example that IP 2.2.2.2 belongs to some dude in Norway. So route all packets that have 2.2.2.2 as destination to Norway. How about IP 2.2.2.3 then? Let's give it a university in Malaysia. Now routers have to know exatly where the holder of each IP lives. They have to scan every packet and compare its IP to a BIG database of locations. Needles to say, this would be very slow.
So how do 128bit-addresses help? Well, we can make a deal that the first 8 bits mark the country. Now the router needs to scan only the first 8 bits and compare it to small database to determine where to send the packet. When the packet reaches the right country, next 8 bits are checked. These 8 bits could mean the state/province/whatever. Then scan 16 bits to determine the correct city. This way you can narrow down the search step by step until the packet has been delivered. Simple and fast.
Shortage? Nah (Score:2)
James
Re:And then.... (Score:3)
let's see; I can telnet to my masqueraded machine
like this:
redir --lport=97 --caddr=192.168.1.2 --cport=23 &
telnet mydomain 97 #forwards connections to port 97
#to the masq'd box's port 23
I can do the same with a web server or any other
kind of service. Set up right, you can open up
all sorts of holes to inbound services. I'm logged
into a masq'ed machine at home from work right now.
Think Big Not Small!!!! (Score:2)
anyway, my 2c, I'll go have another cup of coffee now.
Re:Classful naming (Score:2)
The remaining class C space could run out around the end of the year and it will be a problem. I would, if I were dictator of ARIN, cut the 'they're not fees' line and charge triple for netblocks from the remaining class C space versus class A space. Modern equipment will be fine and older equipment moving into new addresses can still get real class C networks.
That and figure this: in a few years we will have routers many times as powerful as those we have today but the same final limit on IPV4 addresses. If we could approach 100% efficient usage of the IPV4 address space we could buy a valuble year in IPV6 deployment. Fantasy-benevolent-dictator-rhdwdg would shift policies in that direction. But this is the wrong thread for that thought.
All IPs cannot be used (Score:4)
First, it is impossible for every IP address out there to be used. Routing is the evil here. Every little network has to have some contiguous IP block. For a small office it could be a /28 up to a /24. There will always be some IP addresses extra for future growth and because things come in powers of two. If you are very good, 50% coverage is possible. A group of offices becomes a corporation which needs a contiguous (if possible) block under which all of the offices live. Of course we need to have room for future addition of offices. Here, using 50% of our sub-blocks again would be good. Now we are to a total of 25% of the IP's used.
This process goes all the way up to the backbone providers.
We could get greater than a 50% coverage, but at the cost of a management nightmare and larger routing tables. You want to keep an office in the same IP block so that it is one router entry. The same with a corporation. Otherwise, by the time you get a few hops from the end-user toward the backbone you will have router tables too large to handle.
That being said. There are some /8's out there that I think could be broken up. Some of the major players in the Internet's early days got /8's (Class A's) because no one ever dreamed that whole world would be trying to get IP addresses.
Second, I think NAT is only a temporary and mostly an unsatisfactory solution. NAT uses one IP address for a bunch of IP devices. A proxy server has the one IP address and all traffic goes through it. I say it is unsatisfactory, because you cannot run servers multiple servers listening on the same port behind a proxy. You can get away with one mail or one web server by telling the proxy anything for port 25 goes to the mail server or for port 80 goes to the web server, but a second web server would have to run on another port. In short, only clients can go behind a NAT proxy. Eventually we will run out of IP addresses for servers also.
Third, yes your toaster will need to have an IP address. Any device in your house will want to communicate to other devices in your house. Your toaster could set off the fire alarm (which has its own IP) when toasting gets out of hand or blink an icon on your desktop when your toast is done. If a device communicates, it needs an address. If IP is the protocol used, it needs an IP address.
Finally, I'm not sure IPv6 is a good solution. It just gives us a new ceiling in the total number of IP addresses. Granted the ceiling is really damned high, but try telling an ARPAnet boy in the 70's that 32-bits is not enough. I would rather see a variable length address. Give my house a prefix (1.2.3.4.5) and let me assign after that. Everyone else just needs to know that something beginning with my house prefix comes to me. ISP would have their own prefix and their customers would be underneath that. This is a rough, but it might work.
Also, IPv6 is missing other features that I would like to see if we are going to upgrade the 'net. Realtime transmission is top on that list.
Not as bad as it sounds.... yet. (Score:2)
One of my IP addresses is allocated for my household appliances (yes, I'm not making this up). Currently it only has control of my doorbell, a lamp, the roter on my webcam, and my RC car. However, just this one computer has no problem controlling multiple devices.
Even if each appliance had a separate computer with its own IP address, there's no reason that those IP addresses would NEED to be internet IP addresses. They could just as easily use masquarading or some other internal network scheme and full control of those appliances could still be controlled from anywhere in the world with only a single dedicated IP address.
As for upgrading to IPv6, parts of the upgrade will be easy, parts will be difficult. The easy part will involve any type of generic operating system. Linux, any unix system, win95, win 3.1, all those types can be upgraded relatively painlessly. There will still be a lot of confusion, but it could probably be gradually upgraded so the new IPv6 network could temporarily mirror the IPv4 network so for a year or so, it would work both ways as if all computers still used IPv4.
The hard part will be the embedded systems that have IPv4 hard coded and would require a flash upgrade or worse, couldn't be upgraded without a hardware swap. However, for many of those systems, they could still be utilized to some extent, at least until people have a chance to upgrade. Things like X stations, port servers, and the like don't need physical internet addresses and could function equally well as an internal masquaraded network on IPv6 with a router or bouncer taking care of things in the middle.
Its not as clean as we would like, but if we really have 25 years to work on it, it should be possible to have a smooth transition, without the Y2K variety of panic that comes with an imminent forced deadline.
-Restil
restil@alignment.net
Re:This again? (Score:2)
I think "the boys from Redmond"
Cheers
Alastair
Re:Fire Insurance, Fire Detector, Firewall (Score:2)
Re:Routing is a problem. (Score:2)