'The world is going to run out of internet addresses within weeks'

[lammert]

Google's Vint Cerf talked with Australian journalists about the end of availability of IPv4 addresses, the Internet addressing scheme he developed.

I thought it was an experiment and I thought that 4.3 billion [addresses] would be enough to do an experiment

Further reading: [smh.com.au...]

The article also contains some nice comments from an insider about the recent changes in the management hierarchy of Google.

[bill]

The world is running out of IPv4 addresses, but this time we mean it! ;)

It has been well known that IPv4 addresses were getting scarce for years. Yet I don't see many IPv6 capable products at my local electronics store. My ISP isn't looking to switch. I hear a lot of lip service about the importance of this IPv4 addresses shortage, but I just don't see a lot of concrete steps being taken to make the move to IPv6. What gives?

[engine]

Net approaches address exhaustion [bbc.co.uk]

The event that triggers their distribution is widely expected to take place in the next few days.

When that happens each of the five regional agencies that hand out net addresses will get one of the remaining blocks of 16 million addresses.

The addresses in those last five blocks are expected to be completely exhausted by September 2011.

[Edge]

The world is going to run out of internet addresses within weeks

No, we won't - solutions will be found and implemented.

[ChanandlerBong]

the sky is falling down.

No...really!

[carguy84]

you know, some days, this is how I feel Social Security is handled.

[trillianjedi]

No, we won't - solutions will be found and implemented.

They already have been (and were several years ago now).

No-one will notice anything. This is a geeky historic moment only and there will be a few parties - I'm talking at a few events all organised around it. IANA are going to be doing a hand out of last block ceremony at one I'm going to next month.

It's really just an excuse for a good old geek p**s up :)

[albo]

...and for about 10 minutes, the few elite who have IPv4 addresses will be the only ones who have web access and the rest of the world will not. Imagine the brouhaha. Google will get momentarily nervous. And then, magically, ¡!

[LifeinAsia]

These calculations are wrong. The Myans figured out years ago that IP4 addresses would run out in 2012, causing the end of the world.

[Propools]

I can hear the cash registers ringing now.
All of the software and hardware updates and/or new software/equipment being purchased.

But the Chinese [en.wikipedia.org] may have already beat us there..........to a certain regard.

Interesting Google Page [google.com].

[Propools]

Wait. Do cash registers still ring?

[lgn1]

Didn't Egypt just give them all up, when they cancelled the internet :)

[Propools]

But at least my children don't have to worry about not being able to get on Facebook [networkworld.com].

[lammert]

It is not about Google or Facebook supporting IPv6, it is about YOU supporting IPv6. When the pool runs out completely around September, new potential visitors will only be equipped with IPv6 addresses. If your website isn't ready by that time, you are missing a whole new generation of Internet users. They will be satisfied by the sites who's webmasters didn't laugh here in this thread, but instead did their work to support IPv6.

• Is your data center supporting IPv6? probably not
  
• Is your logging software supporting IPv6? probably not
  
• Is your firewall supporting IPv6? probably not
  
• Are your SQL database IP address fields supporting IPv6? probably not
  
• Are your server side scripts supporting IPv6? probably not
  
• Is your front-end reverse proxy supporting IPv6? probably not
  
• Is your email software supprting IPv6? probably not

Vint Cerf was very clear about it, the current Internet architecture was just meant to be an experiment.
The real Internet will start in September 2011, and you'd better take action to become part of it.

[wheel]

I can remember when we only had 3 sets of digits for our IP address. Things were a lot harder back then.

[wheel]

But seriously - lammert - is any of this stuff ready? Are current LAMP stacks already looking after this? Do I need to change my routers?

If people have to actively change things, this is going to be more of a mess than Y2K. Your suggesting that those with the new IPv6 assingments won't even be able to surf most of the sites on the web. This is going to get ugly with a capital G.

[wheel]

Actually, I just did a 5 minute read of here:
[tldp.org...]

And my webserver has an IPv6 ready kernel. And I pinged an IPv6 address. So looks like my underlying infrastructure is ready. Admittedly, individual installed programs might not be, but that's not a dealbreaker - websites will still run and people can still access the sites.

They did mention in that link above that linux kernels version 2.2 aren't ipv6 ready and I think linux kernels version 2.4 shouldn't be used for it. 2.6 is the good stuff.

Calling all domainers. Get your 'test for ipv6 domains' ordered now! :)

[lammert]

If you can ping an IPv6 address you are very lucky. Finding a data center which supports it is currently still a problem. Many large hosting companies haven't rolled out their IPv6 infrastructure yet. They have their own private unallocated pool of IPv4 addresses and may think that they will be able to supply their customers in the near future with IPv4 addresses, but the problem is that new end users won't be able to connect.

It is a sort of Y2K problem. Part of the buzz around it is hype and spinning to get the cash registers running. Different from the Y2K problem is that there is no fixed date that the Internet stops working. Actually the Internet won't stop working and all old connections will still function as before. It is that silently a second parallel Internet will emerge with only partially access to the old IPv4 world trough IPv6-IPv4 gateways and proxies.

One of the things which boggles me is how search engines like Google will handle that. Currently if an IPv6 client searches on Google, the SERPs are the same as with an IPv4 address. But if in the future an IPv6-only clients connects and Google would also show IPv4-only sites, the client would receive "Cannot connect" errors with these sites. That is not good for the user experience and one option could be that search engines would only provide IPv6 capable sites in the SERPs for IPv6 clients and hide the IPv4 sites from the listings.

[Propools]

It seems that mobile [ipv6.com] may already be ready for this. Ya think?

[ergophobe]

Did some IPv6 pings by hostname

Responding
- google.com
- www.ipv6ready.org

Not responding
- any of my sites
- moniker.com
- networksolutions.com
- namecheap.com
- rackspace.com
- liquidweb.com
- microsoft.com
- hostgator.com
- godaddy.com
- bing.com
- wikipedia.org
- apache.org
- webmasterworld.com
- a site promising to help make you IPv6 ready.

- www.iol.unh.edu did respond but had 100% packet loss, which is interesting, because they tout that the IPv6 Consortium - [iol.unh.edu...] - has helped several vendors - [iol.unh.edu...] obtain IPv6 Ready logos and crow "Since 1996 the UNH-IOL has been a pioneer in IPv6 testing." None of said vendors that I tested (IBM, Dell, etc) responded to the IPv6 ping.



Meanwhile, my host says

We are working on network upgrades. Unfortunately even when we are able to offer IPv6 we will not be able to offer this functionality to our shared, reseller, and SDX clients because cPanel and Plesk do not support IPv6 yet even though most of the underlying software does have IPv6 support.

CPanel says - [docs.cpanel.net...] will cPanel support IPv6?

We believe that 2010 will bring major wins for the protocol and our community, including advances in DNS, OS, and application-based compatibility.
As the protocol moves into the mainstream, we remain dedicated to providing globally viable products by moving toward full IPv6 compatibility.

Okay, cancel that. We believe that 2011 will bring major wins...

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Lol, add another digit and the world will only have used 10% of the available IP addresses. Such a simple solution it hurts really...

[bird]

Nice panic... ;)

Nonetheless, there is really not that much to get excited about. Many people seem to think that IPv4 and IPv6 are mutually exclusive, but that isn't the case. Any client connected to his ISP via IPv6 can reach any IPv4 server (eg. web site) without a problem, because IPv4 is technically a subset of IPv6. There must just be one router along the way (eg. at the ISP) who does the address conversion.

It simply doesn't make sense to upgrade servers to IPv6, let alone to remove their IPv4 support, before *every* client on this planet has done so. The ones to start switching first will most likely be large consumer ISPs, and since they distribute their addresses via DHCP, most of their customers will never notice that anything has changed. Modern OSes, web browsers, and e-mail clients *do* support IPv6 just fine, even if they don't go and brag about it.

[pontifex]

We started with IPv6 discussions internally after last pubcon and my hoster will provide IPv6 ready servers starting in Tuesday. We will then put 1 IPv6 proxy online there and see how much traffic that baby takes... If noone comes, this 1 proxy will stay single for a while!
P!

[brotherhood of LAN]

Get more people behind routers and that'll keep the problem swept under the carpet for a bit longer ;o)

> Database & IPv6

I see MySQL aims to have Ipv6 support in MySQL 6.0... [forge.mysql.com...]

I can see this conversion causing quite a headache for a number of systems & software. Having a large list of 4 byte IPs and converting to 16 bytes may even cause some new performance issues.

As an aside, I think the rapid depletion of how many (around 4 billion I'm guessing) public IP addresses shows how wasteful we are given a huge resource pool. At least with this conversion to 16 byte addresses we should not run out for a very very long time... until our fridges, lamps, beds, flowers etc all get their allocation.

[JAB Creations]

It's important to have an IP address for every person's every device that way everyone can be tracked by...I mean always have a connection to the internet.

- John

[lammert]

From the forge.mysql.com link brotherhood of LAN is linking to in his post:

WL#798: MySQL IPv6 support
Affects: Server-6.0 — Status: On-Hold — Priority: Low

emphasis mine

[DaStarBuG]

At least with this conversion to 16 byte addresses we should not run out for a very very long time... until our fridges, lamps, beds, flowers etc all get their allocation.

with IPv6 every single grain of sand on earth can have its own IP address and we still would not run out :)

[Maurice]

@bill DEcades mate decades I recall my boss in the OSI section of British telecom telling about this in the late 80's

[anallawalla]

World shrugs as IPv4 addresses finally exhausted [theregister.co.uk]

On slow news days, prepare for every journalist announcing the end of IPv4 addresses. IANA's pages [iana.org] show otherwise.

[d3vrandom]

Vint Cerf was very clear about it, the current Internet architecture was just meant to be an experiment.
The real Internet will start in September 2011, and you'd better take action to become part of it.

I know you didn't intend your post to have this effect but I just found that last paragraph so bloody funny :D The current Internet with its billions of pages is just an experiment!

Ok the reason I am in this thread is because my hosting provider normally gives IPv4 addresses for free but now wants to charge me for them. But on the bright side he is offering ipv6 addresses for free :(. There's just one problem. I have no idea how many ISPs around the world support ipv6? Will my websites get any visitors if I use ipv6?