Internet Running Out of IP Addresses

[MountainDon]

The Internet is running out of IP addresses. But don't worry, a new kind of numerical address is on the way.

The five last blocks of IP addresses, each with 16.8 million addresses, are to be distributed on Thursday by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to regional registries around the world, The Associated Press reports, citing people familiar with the situation who spoke anonymously.

The regional groups distribute the addresses to Internet service providers and websites. John Curran, chief executive of the American Registry for Internet Numbers, which covers the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean region, told AP he expects his numbers to last up to nine months.

The system now in use, called Internet Protocol version 4, has been around since the 1980s. While experts have known for years that the numbers would one day be depleted, their end is pressuring websites and service providers to move more quickly on technology to create more numbers, AP says. The addresses allow Internet users to reach the websites they're seeking and their e-emails to reach their destinations.

As the 4.3 billion version 4 numbers run out, service providers will give out IPv6 numbers, AP said, although only about 2 percent of websites now support it. Those few sites are among the most-visited sites like Google and Facebook, AP said.

Several technologies "translate" version 4 addresses to version 6, but they haven't been widely tested, Curran told AP, which could lead to slow Web surfing.

Version 4 addresses have run out largely due to so many Internet-equipped phones being used around the world and more Internet use in Asia, AP said.

Two of the last seven version 4 blocks were given to the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre on Tuesday, AP said. That triggered a rule that requires IANA to distribute the final five blocks, one to each of the regional Internet registries around the world, IDG News Service reports.

Curran said that if everything goes as planned, Web users won't notice any changes. But experts told The Guardian newspaper that because officials waited until the last minute, there could be problems.

"You might find that you can't get online unless someone else goes offline," James Blessing, a member of the board of the U.K.'s Internet Service Providers Association, told the paper. "It would be like the Internet before broadband, when everything was on dial-up modems, and if too many people were dialing in then you couldn't get connected."

Alex Pawlik, chief executive of the network coordination center RIPE, which gives out Internet addresses in Europe, told the British paper: "I think in about six months' time people will be waking up and will have to explain to their boss why they haven't done anything about it."

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/02/internet-running-out-of-ip-addresses/

[muldoon]

This has been a recognized problem for nearly 18 years. 

To be honest, at this point, it's really more of a problem for India and China and other developing nations.  We have most of the IPv4 addresses today.  And nearly all of the internet based systems in the US depend heavily on nat.  Nat is network address translation, the process of using "private" addressing locally, and converting them to a public address at the edge.  For example, 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x and 172.16.x.x are private addresses.  They are not routable over the internet and are used on local area networks to support millions of machines.  They in turn are converted to internet addresses inside the consumer routers.  This alleviates much of the issue for the usa today. 

ipv6 has been supported for over a decade in most every major operating system.  The BSd unixes supported it as early as 1995, I even wrote some of the early C code in openBSD for it.  Even windows 2000 supported ipv6 out of the box and since it is 2011 was over a decade ago.  So when the opening line of the article is "But don't worry, a new kind of numerical address is on the way." I have to be skeptical. 

These things tend to work themselves out.  Technology has short lifespans.  The internet is not going anywhere. 

[Native_NM]

One would think that Al Gore would have planned ahead a little better when he was inventing the internet!   

[h0rizon]

Muldoon hit the nail on the head.  I doubt most people will notice.

IPv6 has been around for a while, but honestly it's a pain in the butt to implement.  Much easier to remember and work with a number such as 192.168.1.5 than, say, 21DA:D3:0:2F3B:2AA:FF:FE28:9C5A.  Hence one reason NAT became so popular.

IPv4 was actually introduced as an experiment, and at the time they thought "4.3 billion numbers should be enough to experiment with" (or something like that).  They obviously had no idea we would outgrow it.  I guess even Ale Gore didn't think that far ahead 

It should also be noted that all 4.3 billion numbers aren't actually used.  They are typically chunked out in blocks, similar to having area codes assigned for a particular region.  Some companies simply don't use all of their IP address up; in many instances, providers are asking companies to hand back parts of those blocks so they can be re-distributed.

So don't worry, countryplans won't be affected

[MountainDon]

I introduced this thread as a matter of interest only. More to show that technology works its way around seemingly impossible things.

In no way I intend to initiate fear, worry or a Y2K panic mindset. 

[h0rizon]

Hmmm.  My dry humor has not been translating well on these forums.

Mostly I was commenting to the tone of the AOL article itself, which seems a bit skewed towards FUD, just to clarify what is happening to those unfamiliar with this side of IT.  And why most of us in IT simply hate IPv6, hence the lack of motivation to use it :-)

My comment about countryplans was purely in jest     Sorry for the confusion.

[MountainDon]

h0rizon, I was not singling you out. I should have prefaced my original note with something that indicated it was just a matter of passing interest, not a matter of concern. To me it was interesting because for years I've wondered when the system we've been using would run out of simple numbers to hand out.