Total exhaustion, or is there life after IPv4
At the CloudFlare Internet Summit 2016, Ilya Grigorik, a web productivity engineer at Google, gave this prediction: “As far as I can tell, by 2020 we will have flying machines, singularity and IPv6.”
A year earlier on Twitter, he announced that “the IPv4 party is over,” joining a very popular topic to discuss the past 30 years about the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. In this article we will try to summarize already known facts and assess what will happen next.
/ Pixabay / katja / CC
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The news , which Ilya responded to in 2015, concerned the statement of the global Internet registrar - American ARIN - about the complete exhaustion of IPv4-addresses. Prior to this, alarming messages were received from APNIC and RIPE regional registrars, and LACNIC in early 2017 announced the transition to the third phase of its IPv4 issuance plan, reaching the remaining 4.7 million public addresses.
The only place where there are still publicly available IPv4 addresses is Africa. Although reserves AFRINIC will also be exhausted soon. The dynamics of address consumption can be monitored on a special site to form an idea of the situation.
Over the next few years, Internet service providers will be faced with a choice between the NAT mechanisms and IPv6, an Internet protocol with an almost unlimited number of addresses. Many operators choose the second option. Verizon Wireless this summer stopped issuing public static IPv4 addresses to its business clients and completely switched to IPv6. So far , only 10% of sites around the world use IPv6.
In the meantime, IPv4 addresses are becoming a valuable object of resale. This, by the way, was predicted by John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN, 7 years ago. In the ARIN region, there is a so-called waiting list , and some organizations work "bypass", turning to the secondary and "black" markets. In 2015, ARIN approved 40 million IPv4 addresses. In 2016, this number was reduced by almost 50% to 20.75 million.
According to Janine Goodman, vice president of Avenue4, one of the 24 officially registered ARIN brokers in IPv4 transactions, the price for an address in the secondary market ranges between $ 10 and $ 15. It is not surprising that criminals even deceive users who are ready to overpay for addresses to expand their networks.
The origins of the problem have long been known - 4.3 billion 32-bit IPv4 addresses of 4.5 billion people living on Earth at the time of adopting TCP / IP seemed like a reasonable idea. However, it was quickly questioned by the speed at which Internet access was spreading and the growth of the planet’s population.
/ IPv4 / Wikimedia / Indeterminate / PD Addresses
The first ARPAnet network included hundreds of hosts, but not billions, so the 8-bit addresses fully met the requirements of the network in the first stages of its life. In 1983, when switching to the TCP / IP model, the choice was stopped at 32 bits, which for a long time was more than enough. Many companies received more IPv4 addresses than they needed.
Less than 10 years later, the first doubts about scalability due to the exhaustion of IP addresses appeared. This led to the creation of regional Internet registrars in 1992, which were empowered to manage blocks of addresses in local markets.
With the advent of the web, the growth of users and the demand for new addresses could no longer be stopped. In the first half of the 1990s, attempts were made to contain the inevitable: classless addressing methods, NAT technology , etc.
Some initiatives, such as inter-domain routing and network address translation, have helped reduce the size of the routing tables, as well as optimize the use of IP addresses. But only temporarily. According to Owen DeLong, a member of the ARIN advisory board, without these steps, the addresses would end in a few years. Anyway, since then every registrar “existed in conditions of economy”.
In the meantime, as early as 1994, a recommendation for the development of a successor to IPv4 appeared, and a little later, the main provisions of IPv6. From that moment, hardware and software products that support IPv6 began to appear, but the new protocol basically acted as a backup plan. Today, the protocol share is slowly increasing.
/ IPv6 / Wikimedia / Indeterminate / PD Addresses
The current situation is the result of low expectations for the growth of hosts in the global network, aggravated by the proliferation of mobile devices and the inefficient distribution of addresses in the first decade.
IPv6 is ready to work since 1999, but enterprises are not in a hurry to switch to it. This is due to the fact that IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4. However, in 2011, Martin Levy, director of IPv6's Hurricane Electric operator, called on companies to move to a new protocol in order to avoid costly capital costs and possible disruptions in the future.
However, the transition to IPv6 is also an expensive solution, although the addresses themselves are available for free. Implementation will require the purchase of new network switches and routers and the training of IT staff. On the other hand, there is an opinion that maintaining infrastructure on IPv4 will only increase in price over time. Providers and organizations will need to quickly determine their future strategy, since the transitional stage costs the industry the most.
IPv6 has several advantages, besides potential inexhaustibility. For example, the next generation protocol has an integrated IPSec component that encrypts and authenticates each individual data packet. It can complicate work for cybercriminals, although, of course, vulnerabilities remain in IPv6.
Most operating systems are ready for IPv6 adoption. Smart devices are also ready, which significantly aggravated the IPv4 position. However, many older routers are not compatible with IPv6, so most ISPs will have to support two implementations of the same protocol. It is important that with the full transition to IPv6 access will be available only to supporting IPv6 sites.
Although the number of IPv6 addresses is so great that the prospect of their exhaustion does not bother even the most pessimistic futurists, the question of the future in the face of exhaustion and this protocol periodically rises . The network even has a description of the IPv9 protocol of the future with addresses for anything.
Researcher Bill Arnaud complains that IPv6 does not provide new functionality. He notes that the US telephone system and the post office once faced a similar problem, but found a solution not to create a new addressing system from scratch, but to expand the existing suffixes and prefixes. Thus, Bill hints at the search for an alternative, less radical option than the transition to the new protocol.
Gabriel Ramuglia, founder of the hosting provider, also reminds that IP addresses are not fossil fuels, and large companies that have received blocks from registrars have not really spent them. Many addresses in reality simply remain unclaimed, and the whole problem lies in their inefficient distribution.
Most of the address space is still in use today, and the inactive segment is gradually returning to circulation - this year alone, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found 14 million "extra" IP addresses. Most of them were for sale.
In addition, there are new solutions to save addresses, such as reverse proxy servers . Therefore, IPv4 is unlikely to cease to exist. The Internet is still living in the established paradigm.
PS Here are some more articles on the topic from our blog:
A year earlier on Twitter, he announced that “the IPv4 party is over,” joining a very popular topic to discuss the past 30 years about the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses. In this article we will try to summarize already known facts and assess what will happen next.
/ Pixabay / katja / CC
')
IPv4 now
The news , which Ilya responded to in 2015, concerned the statement of the global Internet registrar - American ARIN - about the complete exhaustion of IPv4-addresses. Prior to this, alarming messages were received from APNIC and RIPE regional registrars, and LACNIC in early 2017 announced the transition to the third phase of its IPv4 issuance plan, reaching the remaining 4.7 million public addresses.
The only place where there are still publicly available IPv4 addresses is Africa. Although reserves AFRINIC will also be exhausted soon. The dynamics of address consumption can be monitored on a special site to form an idea of the situation.
Over the next few years, Internet service providers will be faced with a choice between the NAT mechanisms and IPv6, an Internet protocol with an almost unlimited number of addresses. Many operators choose the second option. Verizon Wireless this summer stopped issuing public static IPv4 addresses to its business clients and completely switched to IPv6. So far , only 10% of sites around the world use IPv6.
In the meantime, IPv4 addresses are becoming a valuable object of resale. This, by the way, was predicted by John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN, 7 years ago. In the ARIN region, there is a so-called waiting list , and some organizations work "bypass", turning to the secondary and "black" markets. In 2015, ARIN approved 40 million IPv4 addresses. In 2016, this number was reduced by almost 50% to 20.75 million.
According to Janine Goodman, vice president of Avenue4, one of the 24 officially registered ARIN brokers in IPv4 transactions, the price for an address in the secondary market ranges between $ 10 and $ 15. It is not surprising that criminals even deceive users who are ready to overpay for addresses to expand their networks.
Why ran out of IPv4
The origins of the problem have long been known - 4.3 billion 32-bit IPv4 addresses of 4.5 billion people living on Earth at the time of adopting TCP / IP seemed like a reasonable idea. However, it was quickly questioned by the speed at which Internet access was spreading and the growth of the planet’s population.
/ IPv4 / Wikimedia / Indeterminate / PD Addresses
The first ARPAnet network included hundreds of hosts, but not billions, so the 8-bit addresses fully met the requirements of the network in the first stages of its life. In 1983, when switching to the TCP / IP model, the choice was stopped at 32 bits, which for a long time was more than enough. Many companies received more IPv4 addresses than they needed.
Less than 10 years later, the first doubts about scalability due to the exhaustion of IP addresses appeared. This led to the creation of regional Internet registrars in 1992, which were empowered to manage blocks of addresses in local markets.
With the advent of the web, the growth of users and the demand for new addresses could no longer be stopped. In the first half of the 1990s, attempts were made to contain the inevitable: classless addressing methods, NAT technology , etc.
Some initiatives, such as inter-domain routing and network address translation, have helped reduce the size of the routing tables, as well as optimize the use of IP addresses. But only temporarily. According to Owen DeLong, a member of the ARIN advisory board, without these steps, the addresses would end in a few years. Anyway, since then every registrar “existed in conditions of economy”.
In the meantime, as early as 1994, a recommendation for the development of a successor to IPv4 appeared, and a little later, the main provisions of IPv6. From that moment, hardware and software products that support IPv6 began to appear, but the new protocol basically acted as a backup plan. Today, the protocol share is slowly increasing.
/ IPv6 / Wikimedia / Indeterminate / PD Addresses
The current situation is the result of low expectations for the growth of hosts in the global network, aggravated by the proliferation of mobile devices and the inefficient distribution of addresses in the first decade.
Transition difficulties
IPv6 is ready to work since 1999, but enterprises are not in a hurry to switch to it. This is due to the fact that IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4. However, in 2011, Martin Levy, director of IPv6's Hurricane Electric operator, called on companies to move to a new protocol in order to avoid costly capital costs and possible disruptions in the future.
However, the transition to IPv6 is also an expensive solution, although the addresses themselves are available for free. Implementation will require the purchase of new network switches and routers and the training of IT staff. On the other hand, there is an opinion that maintaining infrastructure on IPv4 will only increase in price over time. Providers and organizations will need to quickly determine their future strategy, since the transitional stage costs the industry the most.
IPv6 has several advantages, besides potential inexhaustibility. For example, the next generation protocol has an integrated IPSec component that encrypts and authenticates each individual data packet. It can complicate work for cybercriminals, although, of course, vulnerabilities remain in IPv6.
Most operating systems are ready for IPv6 adoption. Smart devices are also ready, which significantly aggravated the IPv4 position. However, many older routers are not compatible with IPv6, so most ISPs will have to support two implementations of the same protocol. It is important that with the full transition to IPv6 access will be available only to supporting IPv6 sites.
What's next
Although the number of IPv6 addresses is so great that the prospect of their exhaustion does not bother even the most pessimistic futurists, the question of the future in the face of exhaustion and this protocol periodically rises . The network even has a description of the IPv9 protocol of the future with addresses for anything.
Researcher Bill Arnaud complains that IPv6 does not provide new functionality. He notes that the US telephone system and the post office once faced a similar problem, but found a solution not to create a new addressing system from scratch, but to expand the existing suffixes and prefixes. Thus, Bill hints at the search for an alternative, less radical option than the transition to the new protocol.
Gabriel Ramuglia, founder of the hosting provider, also reminds that IP addresses are not fossil fuels, and large companies that have received blocks from registrars have not really spent them. Many addresses in reality simply remain unclaimed, and the whole problem lies in their inefficient distribution.
Most of the address space is still in use today, and the inactive segment is gradually returning to circulation - this year alone, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found 14 million "extra" IP addresses. Most of them were for sale.
In addition, there are new solutions to save addresses, such as reverse proxy servers . Therefore, IPv4 is unlikely to cease to exist. The Internet is still living in the established paradigm.
PS Here are some more articles on the topic from our blog:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/339958/
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