Re: [nznog] The End Is Nigh... Asia's running out of IP addresses
In message
On Thu, 29 May 2003, Joe Abley wrote:
So, only 14% of the available IPv4 address space had been assigned to RIRs at the time of that presentation.
Which is fairly meaningless since half those 202 are instead delegated to Large Organisations, Various Registries etc.
For sure. But if push comes to shove IANA can talk quietly (perhaps in the "talk quietly and carry a big stick" sense) to some of those Large Organisations and see if they couldn't perhaps manage with somewhat less than 2**24 addresses.
As the cost of putting a full IP stack and connection drops to only a couple of dollars or less all sorts of random things will start having them. And before you say NAT remember that the power company will want to directly access your meter and hotwater cylinder, your car company the car, your whiteware company the fridge etc. Did I mention the games console?
For many of those it could easily enough be done with NAT. It seems to me that "phoning home" isn't, inheriently, any more problematic than being able to interogate the devices remotely for the vendor. And it's probably somewhat preferable for the customer too. (Even if everything was globally routable, would you want Joe Random Company connecting in to arbitrary devices your network? This isn't your grandmother's Internet any longer. Sure you can use a firewall. You've just moved the problem to being one of ensuring a million or so firewalls are properly maintained. If I were a vendor, I'd take "phoning home".)
When stuff like that comes along we really want them to be deployed on a nice ipv6 internet rather than have to suddenly switch cause demand increases by a factor of 10 overnight.
It would be nice to have $1,000,000 tomorrow too. I don't think either of them will happen.[0] Even at the current ease of use the cost/benefit ratio for converting to IPv6 is too low for (m)any(one) to put effort into doing so. It'll only be when there's a whole lot more benefit (eg, lots of IPv6-only services, or stuff which cannot be done with IPv4+NAT) or a lot less effort (works out of the box without even thinking about it, and has for years) that'll actually happen. Especially since we've had the better part of 10 years for everyone to get pretty good at designing IPv4+NAT compatible protocols and networks, thus greatly mitigating the perceived benefit of switching. Ewen [0] Although should someone wish to give me $1,000,000 tomorrow, I'd be willing to look suitably surprised on camera.
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Ewen McNeill