IPv4 crash, myths about the need to use dedicated IP
It’s not a secret for anyone that the Internet is developing very rapidly, therefore it is not at all surprising that the last free blocks of addresses / 8 (IPv4) were distributed by the Internet Address Space Administration (IANA) between regional registrars in need on February 3, 2011. The last block / 8 was distributed by the Regional Internet Registrar of Europe (RIPE) in September 2012. Only an existing local registrar, who has previously received IPv6 addresses, can claim to receive a / 22 block consisting of 1024 addresses. One thousand addresses is the only thing he can claim. The distribution of provider-independent IPv4 addresses is completely discontinued. In this regard, to get a block / 24 or even an individual ip-address is becoming increasingly difficult.
There are two ways out:
')
- transition to the new version of the Internet protocol IPv6, in which 2 to 128 degrees of free addresses (which is impossible in the coming years due to the use of equipment that is not supporting IPv6 by most providers);
- redistribution of existing IP addresses.
At the dawn of the development of the Internet, in September 1981, when only Internet Protocol was introduced (version 4), it seemed that the addresses would be enough forever and they were “endless”. After all, IPv4 uses 32-bit (four-byte) addresses, which limit the address space of 4,294,967,296 (2 to 32 degrees) to possible unique addresses. The real boom in the assignment of IP addresses began in 1993 as a result of a significant increase in the number of personal computers and intensified in 2005, when the number of mobile devices increased.
Over the years, schemes have been developed for “saving” the use of addresses, for example, the use of private IP address ranges that are unique within the same network, accessing the Internet through a gateway that already has an “external” IP address, which allowed a large number of users use only 1 or several addresses to access the Internet. Now, this decision has become obsolete and represents a major complication in the transition to IPv6.
The graph shows a decrease in the number of non-distributed blocks / 8 over time.
And although the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 was expected a long time ago, many organizations are not ready to implement it. In addition, it is necessary to maintain a presence in both address spaces until the transition to IPv6 is completed. However, some organizations are beginning to provide their new services more and more often only in one address space. For example, Microsoft's DirectAccess is only available in IPv6, as manufacturers found being present in IPv4 too expensive.
By August 2010, only 5% of unallocated addresses remained (12 blocks / 8 out of 256, with approximately 16.7 million addresses each). IPv4 has become a victim of its own success.
The growing demand for IP addresses leads to the emergence of a “black market”, which dramatically increases the cost of obtaining the possibility of “presence” on the Internet today. After the distribution of the last block of addresses / 8, the only way to get the addresses will be the black market, prices for addresses in which will rise to a level that will be acceptable for a business that needs addresses. If the survival of your business depends on getting IPv4 addresses, you will be ready to pay for them, even if you have to bypass the rules.
Hosting providers have contributed to the development of the black market. In the past decade, as soon as hosting became publicly available, providers had many free blocks of IP addresses. And as it often happens, the idea arose to earn additional funds for them, renting IP-addresses for rent. However, this amount of IP was simply no one to sell, because not all users need VDS, SSL, etc. The solution was found - to invent myths according to which ordinary webmasters simply need dedicated ip-addresses for their sites and simply cannot do without them.
By selling their IP addresses in the hundreds of $ 0.5-1 / month for the address, the providers received a good profit. So a subnet of 256 addresses cost the provider a maximum of $ 100 / year, and the income from it sometimes exceeded $ 2500 per year. And such subnets sold dozens. The fact that the use of addresses was not entirely targeted - very few people worried. The beginning of the shortage of IP addresses in the hosting services market has further increased the profits from their sale, some were not shy about offering a price of $ 5 per address or more. Not all, however, were driven by a thirst for profit, some, raising prices, simply tried unsuccessfully to slow down demand, as their stock of addresses came to an end, and it was expensive / impossible to take new ones.
Areas of influence of responsible regional registrars trying to control the fair allocation of addresses
More and more providers are beginning to realize that soon, even for dedicated servers, free addresses may not remain at all, and the server cannot do without its ah. In addition, the income from the rental server is ten times higher than income from untargeted address sales. Such large companies as LeaseWeb, where more than a hundred new servers are installed every day, were forced not only to raise prices in order to slow down demand, but even to impose a limit on the maximum number of AI available for one server.
Will it help? I do not think ... But it will definitely give some time.
Over the years, webmasters have been inspired to use the allocated ip-addresses for their projects. Now the situation is reversed. More and more hosting providers are trying to prove that the client does not need an address, not only because everyone suddenly became honest, most likely because the majority have nothing more to offer, and the client can go to where there is still what he is looking for ... Alas people were brainwashed in such a way that sometimes they simply cannot be persuaded, even with the best of intentions. People continue to believe that they have been inspired ...
Let's look at the most common myths:
- SEO (search engine optimization), the myth that placing a site on a dedicated ip-address increases its PR rank (page rank), but it is not.
- The negative impact of neighboring sites when placed on one ip-address is another fiction. Placing hundreds or even thousands of sites on one address is common practice, for example, most Google services use a common IP address. There can be no drawbacks in this, if only because there are more sites on the Internet now than there are ip-addresses.
- The need for a second address on the server to create a DNS is also questionable. You can always use DNS-s of registrars, hosting providers, besides, when placing primary and secondary DNS on one server - the necessary redundancy is lost, for which there is at least two ns-servers provided.
- Dedicated IP for SSL certificate. Although SSL sites cannot share the same ip address with other SSL sites, you can still place one such site on an ah pi address with common web sites or some services (DNS, ftp, email, etc.).
- Dedicated IP for monitoring traffic consumption. Another common myth is to assign sites different IP addresses to control the traffic consumed by each of the sites. In fact, for the same apache web server, you can install additional modules, such as mod_logio and mod_watch, with which you can easily control the consumption of traffic by individual sites located at the same address.
- Only IPv4 addresses can be used. If you have websites / servers that are used for testing or only for you - it is advisable to assign them an IPv6 address, this may even lead to increased security, since you will make them unavailable for IPv4 Internet.
- VPN access. You do not need a separate ip-address for each virtual channel. If you use Network Address Translation (NAT), you can connect as many virtual channels as you want, and you will not be limited by the number of IP addresses, while all your users of virtual channels will have one “external” address.
- Virtual Servers (VDS). Yes, you really need dedicated ip-addresses for them if you want to sell them to different customers, however if you use virtualization as a security measure to isolate various services (databases, file storage), you should consider assigning at least some virtual machines have private (“internal”) IP addresses and make them available only from other virtual machines on this server.
- Black SEO. Sites, advancing black methods, still waiting for a sad fate. Search engines are advanced, able to recognize your doorways, etc., even if they are on different IP addresses.
In conclusion, I would like to ask webmasters involved in black SEO in particular - do not litter the Internet with junk, make useful, unique projects for people, not for search engines. The online community will appreciate this and the addresses will remain.
There are two ways out:
')
- transition to the new version of the Internet protocol IPv6, in which 2 to 128 degrees of free addresses (which is impossible in the coming years due to the use of equipment that is not supporting IPv6 by most providers);
- redistribution of existing IP addresses.
A bit of history
At the dawn of the development of the Internet, in September 1981, when only Internet Protocol was introduced (version 4), it seemed that the addresses would be enough forever and they were “endless”. After all, IPv4 uses 32-bit (four-byte) addresses, which limit the address space of 4,294,967,296 (2 to 32 degrees) to possible unique addresses. The real boom in the assignment of IP addresses began in 1993 as a result of a significant increase in the number of personal computers and intensified in 2005, when the number of mobile devices increased.
Over the years, schemes have been developed for “saving” the use of addresses, for example, the use of private IP address ranges that are unique within the same network, accessing the Internet through a gateway that already has an “external” IP address, which allowed a large number of users use only 1 or several addresses to access the Internet. Now, this decision has become obsolete and represents a major complication in the transition to IPv6.
The graph shows a decrease in the number of non-distributed blocks / 8 over time.
And although the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 was expected a long time ago, many organizations are not ready to implement it. In addition, it is necessary to maintain a presence in both address spaces until the transition to IPv6 is completed. However, some organizations are beginning to provide their new services more and more often only in one address space. For example, Microsoft's DirectAccess is only available in IPv6, as manufacturers found being present in IPv4 too expensive.
By August 2010, only 5% of unallocated addresses remained (12 blocks / 8 out of 256, with approximately 16.7 million addresses each). IPv4 has become a victim of its own success.
Black market
The growing demand for IP addresses leads to the emergence of a “black market”, which dramatically increases the cost of obtaining the possibility of “presence” on the Internet today. After the distribution of the last block of addresses / 8, the only way to get the addresses will be the black market, prices for addresses in which will rise to a level that will be acceptable for a business that needs addresses. If the survival of your business depends on getting IPv4 addresses, you will be ready to pay for them, even if you have to bypass the rules.
Contribution of hosting providers to the development of the black market
Hosting providers have contributed to the development of the black market. In the past decade, as soon as hosting became publicly available, providers had many free blocks of IP addresses. And as it often happens, the idea arose to earn additional funds for them, renting IP-addresses for rent. However, this amount of IP was simply no one to sell, because not all users need VDS, SSL, etc. The solution was found - to invent myths according to which ordinary webmasters simply need dedicated ip-addresses for their sites and simply cannot do without them.
By selling their IP addresses in the hundreds of $ 0.5-1 / month for the address, the providers received a good profit. So a subnet of 256 addresses cost the provider a maximum of $ 100 / year, and the income from it sometimes exceeded $ 2500 per year. And such subnets sold dozens. The fact that the use of addresses was not entirely targeted - very few people worried. The beginning of the shortage of IP addresses in the hosting services market has further increased the profits from their sale, some were not shy about offering a price of $ 5 per address or more. Not all, however, were driven by a thirst for profit, some, raising prices, simply tried unsuccessfully to slow down demand, as their stock of addresses came to an end, and it was expensive / impossible to take new ones.
Areas of influence of responsible regional registrars trying to control the fair allocation of addresses
More and more providers are beginning to realize that soon, even for dedicated servers, free addresses may not remain at all, and the server cannot do without its ah. In addition, the income from the rental server is ten times higher than income from untargeted address sales. Such large companies as LeaseWeb, where more than a hundred new servers are installed every day, were forced not only to raise prices in order to slow down demand, but even to impose a limit on the maximum number of AI available for one server.
Will it help? I do not think ... But it will definitely give some time.
Myths
Over the years, webmasters have been inspired to use the allocated ip-addresses for their projects. Now the situation is reversed. More and more hosting providers are trying to prove that the client does not need an address, not only because everyone suddenly became honest, most likely because the majority have nothing more to offer, and the client can go to where there is still what he is looking for ... Alas people were brainwashed in such a way that sometimes they simply cannot be persuaded, even with the best of intentions. People continue to believe that they have been inspired ...
Let's look at the most common myths:
- SEO (search engine optimization), the myth that placing a site on a dedicated ip-address increases its PR rank (page rank), but it is not.
- The negative impact of neighboring sites when placed on one ip-address is another fiction. Placing hundreds or even thousands of sites on one address is common practice, for example, most Google services use a common IP address. There can be no drawbacks in this, if only because there are more sites on the Internet now than there are ip-addresses.
- The need for a second address on the server to create a DNS is also questionable. You can always use DNS-s of registrars, hosting providers, besides, when placing primary and secondary DNS on one server - the necessary redundancy is lost, for which there is at least two ns-servers provided.
- Dedicated IP for SSL certificate. Although SSL sites cannot share the same ip address with other SSL sites, you can still place one such site on an ah pi address with common web sites or some services (DNS, ftp, email, etc.).
- Dedicated IP for monitoring traffic consumption. Another common myth is to assign sites different IP addresses to control the traffic consumed by each of the sites. In fact, for the same apache web server, you can install additional modules, such as mod_logio and mod_watch, with which you can easily control the consumption of traffic by individual sites located at the same address.
- Only IPv4 addresses can be used. If you have websites / servers that are used for testing or only for you - it is advisable to assign them an IPv6 address, this may even lead to increased security, since you will make them unavailable for IPv4 Internet.
- VPN access. You do not need a separate ip-address for each virtual channel. If you use Network Address Translation (NAT), you can connect as many virtual channels as you want, and you will not be limited by the number of IP addresses, while all your users of virtual channels will have one “external” address.
- Virtual Servers (VDS). Yes, you really need dedicated ip-addresses for them if you want to sell them to different customers, however if you use virtualization as a security measure to isolate various services (databases, file storage), you should consider assigning at least some virtual machines have private (“internal”) IP addresses and make them available only from other virtual machines on this server.
- Black SEO. Sites, advancing black methods, still waiting for a sad fate. Search engines are advanced, able to recognize your doorways, etc., even if they are on different IP addresses.
In conclusion, I would like to ask webmasters involved in black SEO in particular - do not litter the Internet with junk, make useful, unique projects for people, not for search engines. The online community will appreciate this and the addresses will remain.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/154883/
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