There is some confusion with whether IPv4 has ended, “is about to end,” or there are still a lot of them.

In this article, I will sort out questions about who the IP-addresses are out, who do not, who is to blame and what awaits us after death.

Source all IP

Those who say that the source of the IP addresses is the IANA will be a bit wrong. IANA, like the RIRs, obey a policy that is adopted by consensus among all Internet participants. (For those who do not know who IANA and RIR are, see below). The community has adopted IPv4 as the protocol, along with its “network number” and “broadcast address”, the concept of route aggregation, segments of gray and multicast addresses, etc. It is this (community) that determines the rules of address allocation and the filtering policy. And it was it who delegated a decent portion of addresses to IANA. (not all / 0, but a very large piece - more than / 1). And already the addresses from it are distributed by IANA.

Who are the "community members"? Purely formal - any people. In practice: “any people” are people who are able to talk coherently about the procedures for allocating (allocating) and assigning (assigning) addresses, understanding how multihomed is implemented, and what is the non-transitory private attribute of the community. That is, de facto, network administrators and noc'i large telecom operators, large hosters, very large organizations, etc. These communities (somewhat arbitrarily) are divided by region. Our (European) community is called RIPE, I do not remember decoding in French. There are several such communities, and they determine, firstly, local rules for the allocation of addresses, and secondly, global rules.

To manage addresses (to protect against the reuse of the same address by two different companies), a non-profit organization, the RIPE NCC, is created (note that the RIPE and the RIPE NCC are two big differences, just like the residents of the city and the mayor's office). In other regions, about the same. NCC is also called the RIR (regional internet registry). RIR assigns a small LIR in the region for bribes - Local Internet Registry. LIR is a status that gives an organization the right to ask for other addresses from the RIR NCC (not free of charge for the applicant, most often). In addition to LIR, mere mortals can also ask themselves addresses - so-called. Assosiated Members, but we don’t focus on them. Important: IANA distributes between different RIR addresses. It allocates immediately by / 8 (that is, 16 million addresses at a time).
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So, the chain of the phenomenon of ip-addresses to the people:

(the community chooses between TokenRing and IPX, but wins IPv4) -> IANA -> RIPE -> LIR -> provider -> that same static address for 100 rubles per month.

It is clear that the provider can be an LIR, or it can also be an end user, in this case the LIR takes and orders IP addresses for itself. Free of charge, by the way (except for 1,800 euros per year for status).

So who plunders national property?

So, firstly - in early 2011, the last / 8 grids were distributed. That is, IANA has NO more free ipv4 networks. That's the point. In this sense, those who claim that the free IPv4 addresses are already over are right. And all the previous hype "is about to end" concerned precisely the IANA addresses.

Secondly, the RIPE NCC has about 83 million IP addresses not distributed to the LIRs. How many LIRs do is so easy not to count, but, there are more than 7.5k of them in Europe, so if everyone nykaet a couple of free / 24 networks, then this is 38 million more addresses. I do not specifically look at other continents, because we care only for Europe. In this sense, those who say that there are still a lot of free addresses are right.

However, they still end.

According to the RIPE NCC forecast, 67 million will be distributed approximately by January 2012. After that, the so-called. "The era of the last / 8", that is, the moment when there will be a little more than 16 million free addresses. After that, each (LIR'u) will give the last 1024 addresses (/ 22) and say "ask for you not to occupy." Taking into account the RIPE NCC forecast and the reserves of the LIRs, we can say that we will survive the presidential elections, and then the addresses will end. Until the end of 2012 exactly, most likely sooner.

Fighting fists

In order to fight against comrades who enter the black day of the address, the RIPE NCC tightens the conditions for issuing addresses from time to time. Now the addresses are issued with an eye for 3 months, that is, you need to prove that the addresses will be used within three months. With the deduction of virtualization, all the rest may be required documents, up to invoices for payment of network equipment. That is, to say “give me / 16, just in case, it will be useful to us,” will not work.

What awaits us after death?

All consequences will come gradually - due to the exhaustion of reserves and an increase in the density of use of existing addresses.

1. Telecoms / providers with dynamic white IP during peak hours will begin to fail in service (I’m almost quoting a representative of NWT from an IPv6 event)
2. Providers with NAT (gray addresses) in hours of maximum load will worsen the quality of service (they can break connections or be stupid for their installation).
3. White IP will rise.
4. It will be more difficult to rent a grid for dedicated. The size of the offer will decrease.
5. The cost of any way dedicated server with ipv4 will start to grow. Shared hosting will begin to more actively use backend / front-end clustering (goodbye single apache with one IP per server).
6. There may be difficulties in connecting new users with providers and hosters.

There is an assumption that as the overhead of IPv4 grows, the popularity of IPv6 will grow, at some point making scarce ipv4 useless. (Personally, my forecast is that in 2020 at least one third of the sites will still be IPv4 compliant, although 99% will have IPv6).

However, this is only an assumption, since it is quite possible to imagine a scenario in which the introduction of IPv6 will be delayed to the last, and IPv4 addresses will become the main expense on hosting (enriching the capitalist LIRs that exploit the proletariat in the face of hosting clients). Home white IP (no matter the dynamics or static) will become exotic. The address transfer market will be very significant, with speculations, scandals around falsified documents in the NCC, draconian demands from the NCC, etc. In principle, the NCC is already threatening to audit randomly selected LIRs, so they are also preparing for this scenario.

Personally, the first seems to me more interesting, since the second will still lead to the transition to IPv6, but not in the “need to switch” mode, but in the “it is impossible to live this way anymore” mode.

Ipv4 specs

Yes, they can be sold, more precisely, transferred, and for money or not, the NCC does not care. Anticipating the questions, the addresses “at 100 rubles each” from the provider cannot be sold, you need to be at least an associate member or LIR. However, when buying, the buying party must prove that it is needed by the same procedure, according to which new ones are issued. The RIPE NCC expects that after the distribution of all addresses, their main task will be to control the transfer of addresses between organizations.

Written based on the LIR training course, held in St. Petersburg this week.