Today is a historic milestone for the Internet: the allocation of the last remaining IPv4 Internet addresses from a central pool. The ICANN pool of available unallocated addresses for IPv4 is completely depleted.
The allocation of the final IPv4 addresses is analogous to the last crates of a product leaving a manufacturing warehouse and going to the regional stores or distributions centers, where they can still be distributed to the public. Once they are gone, the supply is exhausted. It’s only a matter of time before the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must start denying requests for IPv4 address space.
This is not the IPocalypse. The Internet technical community has been planning for IPv4 depletion for some time. IPv6, a new Internet Protocol with a massive amount of address space, is already taking over as IPv4 runs out. For most users, all it means is that your computer’s IP address today might look like 192.0.2.10 (an example IPv4 address), but soon it may resemble 2001:0DB8::/feed:b766 (an example IPv6 address).
The next big event for IPv6 deployment is World IPv6 Day on 8 June, 2011. The goal of this Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out. Want to find out your IPv6 readiness? Use this test.
4 Comments
Tomi says:
I found some comments on end of IPv4 at
How the End of IPv4 Affects You
http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2011/02/end-of-ipv4/
Saying that there aren’t any more IPv4 addresses is, quite simply, FUD. We all know it’s FUD because our computers can still connect to the internet. Repeating FUD simply dilutes the message, and often results in reporting which is just laughably wrong.
What’s actually happened is that ICANN, which assigns large ranges of IPv4 addresses to regional registries, has run out of ranges to assign. The regional registries, which in turn assign large blocks of IPv4 addresses to network providers in their region, have for the most part not run out — yet. But they will, eventually, and that’s forcing the network providers to be more cautious about assigning IPv4 ranges to their customers — including the access providers and hosting companies who in turn assign smaller ranges and individual IPs to mail, web, and other servers, and to end users.
What will have to happen between now and then is fairly clear.
First, services which rely on using multiple IP addresses to separate traffic will have to change their architecture. This includes many web hosting environments
At the same time, customer premise equipment (CPE) — the routers and modems that connect end user networks to their access provider — need to be updated to use IPv6 correctly.
But, what will convince all of these companies — especially ESPs and hosting firms — to actually make this investment in their future?
Tomi says:
An active marketplace for buying and selling IPv4 addresses is materializing, and policymakers are clarifying the rules associated with how network operators can monetize this increasingly scarce resource. At least four websites are serving as brokers for organizations that want to sell or lease IPv4 address space
Markets For IPv4 Addresses Emerging
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/04/25/2129205/Markets-For-IPv4-Addresses-Emerging
Need IPv4 addresses? Get ‘em here
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/042511-ipv4-sales.html?hpg1=bn
At least four websites — http://www.depository.net, http://www.denuo.com, http://www.addrex.net and http://www.tradeipv4.com — are serving as brokers for organizations that want to sell or lease IPv4 address space.
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