[Topgun]

http://betaus.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-54646720110203?ca=rdt

[Flipside]

Shoulda hurried up with IPV6 instead of arguing over who was going to pay for it

[NGTM-1R]

I vote for the snuffleupagus to panic too.

[IronBeer]

Meh. Snuffle to the up to the agus.

[T-LoW]

When will they be depleted? December 21 2012?

[ssmit132]

The article says Thursday, i.e. yesterday.

[Spicious]

We so should have reclaimed Egypt's IP addresses while they weren't using them.

[Scooby_Doo]

Ummmm didn't we have this panic years ago?  Didn't NAT/PAT kinda solve it for the time being?

[Fury]

NAT doesn't change the fact that you always need to have a public IP address. NAT is extremely useful to have in local network, such as homes, offices and corporates. NAT means that if you have multiple computers connected to internet via one router, they all share the same public IP. Of course, NAT is also very good to have from security perspective.

Now, what about devices that don't connect through NAT? Devices such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops usually connect to internet directly using their own public IP-address.. Obviously wifi doesn't count as it is almost always used in local network to connect to internet via same router as other cabled-in computers. Numbers of mobile devices using internet connection have skyrocketed in the last few years.

Plus of course more and more people get computers with internet connection, with or without NAT. Particularly in the developing countries.

Right now IPv4 addresses have been exhausted and the world is running on reserve stock which won't last long. The funny thing that we could have easily avoided this because IPv6 has been available and usable since late 90's. Over ten ****ing years. And yet, almost everyone just sat on their ass and now they're panicking.

Guess that's human nature.

[Flipside]

NAT doesn't change the fact that you always need to have a public IP address. NAT is extremely useful to have in local network, such as homes, offices and corporates. NAT means that if you have multiple computers connected to internet via one router, they all share the same public IP. Of course, NAT is also very good to have from security perspective.

Now, what about devices that don't connect through NAT? Devices such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops usually connect to internet directly using their own public IP-address.. Obviously wifi doesn't count as it is almost always used in local network to connect to internet via same router as other cabled-in computers. Numbers of mobile devices using internet connection have skyrocketed in the last few years.

Plus of course more and more people get computers with internet connection, with or without NAT. Particularly in the developing countries.

Right now IPv4 addresses have been exhausted and the world is running on reserve stock which won't last long. The funny thing that we could have easily avoided this because IPv6 has been available and usable since late 90's. Over ten ****ing years. And yet, almost everyone just sat on their ass and now they're panicking.

Guess that's human nature.

This++.

The problem, as I understand it, originates from an ongoing argument about who is going to pay for the upgrade, the ISP's or the Governments, it's akin to fiddling whilst there's a strange red glow on the horizon that is getting brighter. Odd thing is, large swathes of the Internet already support IPV6, it's the less developed countries that are still forced to use older technology that would probably be hit the hardest.

[Ghostavo]

Wasn't there a drive to encourage the usage of IPv6 a few years ago? Something involving ludicrous amounts of free porn...

[FUBAR-BDHR]

The question is why in their infinite wisdom didn't they come up with a system that translated IPv4 to IPv6 automatically?  That way new equipment could already be using IPv6 while the old stuff continues to run as normal.  Sure your old IPv4 computer might not be able to access the IPv6 sat link in your car but tough upgrade when you can. 

[Flipside]

It's down to the packet header, the whole difference between IPV4 and IPV6 is that the address is four times the size, so you have a 128Bit address instead of a 32Bit. What amazes me is that they didn't use 64 or 128Bit in the first place, but I don't think it was anticipated that so many people would require an address in the future. It's possible software could be written to take that into account, but the logistics of it would mean huge delays in data transfer speeds.

Still, you are supposed to design systems to be Future Friendly, and 128Bits is more systems than could possibly realistically exist on a single planet, not without a fundamental shift in technology, at least.

Edit: It should be noted that IPv6 routers etc are 100% backwards compatible, so there's no reason not to start the transfer over in places like the US, Japan and Korea and that would at least free up those addresses for the countries that are lagging behind, the problem is that the headers from IPv6 countries would be unreadable by those running IPv4, so you'd need some kind of NAT-resembling system on a countrywide basis to be able to connect to IPv4 sites. It's a real nightmare.

[Shade]

128Bits is more systems than could possibly realistically exist on a single planet, not without a fundamental shift in technology, at least.

Understatement of the year. Considering that in theory IPv6 allows for around 5.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 addresses per person currently alive, I'd say it would take more than a shift in technology to exhaust them. Unless colonizing a couple of extra galaxies counts as a shift in technology

[Flipside]

128Bits is more systems than could possibly realistically exist on a single planet, not without a fundamental shift in technology, at least.

Understatement of the year. Considering that in theory IPv6 allows for around 5.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 addresses per person currently alive, I'd say it would take more than a shift in technology to exhaust them. Unless colonizing a couple of extra galaxies counts as a shift in technology

Yeah Interstellarnets might push it, but I suspect by then a new protocol will be in place The truth is, TCP/IP is a pretty flexible protocol, but the headers were designed in the day when sizes had to be extremely limited for the sake of speed.

Edit: I wonder if you could add something at the application layer to deal with part of the problem, but it would mean either having a pool of 'anonymous' IPv4 addresses that could be assigned and then released when finished with or having area-based IPv4 addresses applied via your assigned IPv6 one. Neither approach would make Governments or Organisations happy because it would be practically impossible to track a single person through an IP number (not that this is easy even now).

[Kosh]

What amazes me is that they didn't use 64 or 128Bit in the first place,

Usually things like this are a result of the hardware limitations at the time of their creation. Since IPv4 dates back to the late 70's that seems to be the most likely culprit.

[Flipside]

Exactly, and speed as well, IPv4 was in use when 1200 Baud was considered fast for an online connection.

[Kosh]

Pong also had state of the art graphics......


And if you remember any of that first hand you're truely ancient. 

[Flipside]

I used to go across the road and play our neighbours Binatone when it was the only Console on the market

[Klaustrophobia]

128Bits is more systems than could possibly realistically exist on a single planet, not without a fundamental shift in technology, at least.

Understatement of the year. Considering that in theory IPv6 allows for around 5.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 addresses per person currently alive, I'd say it would take more than a shift in technology to exhaust them. Unless colonizing a couple of extra galaxies counts as a shift in technology

you know i bet they said the same type of thing back in the day about disk space.  i don't have first hand experience with this, but some of you probably remember when a megabyte file was ****ing HUGE.  hell the computer that flew a rocket to the moon used 6 kilobytes of memory.  some of the hard drives today could probably allow for around 5.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 documents per person on earth

you never know.