[HN Gopher] IP addresses through 2024
___________________________________________________________________
IP addresses through 2024
Author : DanAtC
Score : 150 points
Date : 2025-01-12 01:39 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.potaroo.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.potaroo.net)
| jacob019 wrote:
| Interesting how the IPv4 price has pulled back 30% since early
| 2022.
| gruez wrote:
| That's probably more to do with interest rates than anything
| else. Cheap money => speculative assets are worth more.
| quink wrote:
| Probably also CGNAT, and tunnelling instead of directly
| exposing your servers.
| cyberax wrote:
| The investment in infrastructure is cyclical. A lot of ISPs
| started large expansion projects, fueled by the lockdowns in
| 2020-s that highlighted the inadequate infrastructure. A lot of
| content companies also acquired additional IPv4 space for
| servers.
| mike_d wrote:
| That is when Amazon stopped pouring money into buying up as
| much IPv4 as possible and the market returned to demand based
| pricing.
| wmf wrote:
| Is Amazon not demand? Do they exist outside economics?
|
| (Legally they're supposed to use those addresses within a
| year(?) of buying them, but I won't pretend that anyone would
| really notice whether that's the case or not.)
| mike_d wrote:
| You know what I mean.
| wmf wrote:
| I don't know what you mean. Do you think Amazon was
| paying very high prices for IPs they don't need? Were
| they trying to corner the market and create a monopoly?
| chippiewill wrote:
| It's easy for Amazon to artificially use their address
| space because they can rotate them around customers using
| dynamic allocations.
| timewizard wrote:
| There is an hourly fee for IPv4s now. There was not before.
| ta1243 wrote:
| That's more to do with increasing prices than decreasing
| demand
| timewizard wrote:
| In the traditional capitalist model, those are the same
| thing.
| technothrasher wrote:
| > but I won't pretend that anyone would really notice
|
| I've got a /24 that I obtained back in the Wild West days
| of the early 1990's, when all you had to do was send an
| email form and a few minutes later you'd get one assigned.
| I haven't used it in over 20 years now, but nobody has ever
| come to take it from me.
| wmf wrote:
| You may be grandfathered under pre-RIR rules and also no
| one is auditing this stuff.
| defrost wrote:
| Seeing the domain which screams Australian (potaroo, quoll,
| quokka, et al) I looked at the author's name which brought back a
| few memories :-)
|
| For general interest, this is (among other accolades) 2012
| Internet Hall of Fame Inductee Geoff Huston
| https://www.internethalloffame.org/official-biography-geoff-...
| ironhaven wrote:
| I feel like this blog does not accurately describe how large the
| ipv6 address space even after accounting for it being reduced by
| 2^64 for the host portion of the address. If it did it would make
| the concerned comments about /28 ipv6 network sizes seem very
| misplaced.
|
| A single static ipv4 address is a /32 slice into the ipv4 space
| and is considered a reasonable to size give out to a single
| person or even a small business that asks for it. Of course
| larger companies and telecom operators need larger network
| allocations and they have gotten them for many years in the past.
|
| Now realize that if a /64 ipv6 network is the minimum size like a
| single ipv4 address then you see that the ipv6 address space has
| 2^32 /32 ipv6 networks. Now with ipv6 any technical person and
| acquire a entire ipv4 internet sized network in a continuous
| (globally routeable if you want) range.
|
| And if any sized business today can expect buy a single "class c"
| /24 range of ipv4 it makes sense that large global compaines get
| a ipv6 /20 network to run their entire network on it.For example
| cloudflare[1] uses 6 regional /32 networks and a /29 network for
| all their routing needs. Imaging trying to build cloudflare with
| less than 32 addresses in a single /24 ipv4 allocation.
|
| ipv6 is so large that you can just design your network without
| worrying about subnet size and route based on real policy or
| security boundaries alone. We will run out of MAC addresses
| before we run out of ipv6
|
| [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/ips/
| ahsteele wrote:
| It's really hard to even comprehend how large IPv6 is. I have
| found that extreme examples tend to help people get there. Here
| are some I've used in the past.
|
| There are enough IPv6 Addresses for 4.77 x 10^28 for every
| living person.
|
| If each IPv6 address was a grain of sand...
|
| That's 2.39 x 10^18 of addresses per person, or roughly enough
| sand sized addresses to equal about 1.8 times the volume of
| earths ocean per person.
|
| At sand scale all IPv6 addresses would take the volume of 12
| sols.
|
| Conversely, all the IPv4 addresses in this sand scale would
| slightly over fill an oil drum.
|
| From "IPv6 Addresses: Big Numbers, Big Solutions":
| https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1365362
| bruce511 wrote:
| Hah - all of those examples use a planet as comparison. The
| first 16 bits of the address should be reserved to be used by
| the Planetary Internet Addressing Council (PIAC)
|
| Allocating all addresses to Earth seems very shortsighted.
|
| (Some sarcasm should be assumed.)
|
| It doesn't really matter how you explain large-number math to
| people who are bad at large-number math (aka all of us) -
| there's always some bright-spark who misses the point.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The moon can share with the earth, and anything further
| away needs special encapsulation to deal with hours or more
| of latency.
| atq2119 wrote:
| It's only minutes for the inner planets. But of course
| that's already enough to require special treatment.
| rvnx wrote:
| Well we could argue that this support for trillions of IP
| addresses is nice, except that IPv6 does not technically
| work in interplanetary environments due to various
| hardcoded timeouts.
|
| The first martians are likely to run their own local
| network and then use a VPN over DTN for their everyday
| communications by email (and appear coming from a single
| IPv6 address).
|
| One good thing though: since most of the humanity's
| knowledge is going to be packed in an LLM they won't really
| actually need internet to learn about things. But lack of
| videos may be annoying.
| remram wrote:
| I see only one IPv6 timeout, for fragmented packet
| reassembly, in other words _between reception of
| fragments_. So it 's a bound on jitter not latency, and I
| see no reason it couldn't be increased for interplanetary
| links.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think it's more useful to comprehend it as 64+64 though.
|
| We can give every person a million local networks, with
| unlimited devices on each local network. That's more accurate
| and also easy to think about.
| timewizard wrote:
| In current practice it's more like a global 61+64. We're
| all inside the globally routable /3 with ULAs on the side.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Chess has 1e100 possible games but the more practical metric
| is that the average game involves 40 black moves and 40 white
| moves.
|
| Similarly, it's better to think of the depth of a network's
| topology. The size of the tree when full is immaterial,
| especially when the last 64 bits is intended to be so sparse
| that random address assignment is viable.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I missed the edit deadline and wanted to add:
|
| So instead of talking about there being 2^128 addresses,
| it's more useful to talk about there being 4k global
| regions (/12 RIRs), assigning /32s to ISPs in their region.
|
| Each ISP can assign a /48 to each customer site, which can
| then subdivide into 256 buildings with 256 VLANs each (or
| some other balance of the these, eg 8 buildings with 64
| floors each and 128 VLANs on each floor) with the hosts
| selecting randomly (or SLAACly) from the final 64 bits.
|
| Some ISPs where customers are in a single dwelling will
| only give you a /56.
| nottorp wrote:
| > It's really hard to even comprehend how large IPv6 is.
|
| But the allocations for a single device are so large that
| it's not actually as large as it seems to be. Kinda like usb
| N only working at N-2 speeds...
| ta1243 wrote:
| One problem of ipv6 is proponents saying there are 2^128
| addresses.
|
| It's really hard to comprehend how many unusable ipv6
| addresses are.
|
| Having more than 2^16 hosts on a subnet is pretty much
| impossible. Sticking with "grain of sand" units, but using
| volumes all from wolfram alpha:
|
| There's 2^80 usable IPs in the entire ipvv6 space, because of
| the /64 subnets. That's plenty. But for every subnet, that's
| 40 cubic metres unusable for every subnet, and a sphere 1mm
| wide of usable addresses.
|
| My ISP give me a /48. I have under 30 addressable devices
| over 3 vlans. I'm using 40 cubic miles of space. A ratio of
| about 10 trillion:1
|
| But that's nothing. The IP allocators are happy to give a
| bank a /16, or in your "grain of sand" measurements 30 times
| the volume of the moon.
|
| To match my unused:used ratio of 10 trillion to one, chase
| manhattan would need 2^70 devices, which is billions of
| addresses per cell.
|
| All the space that fanboys go on about is almost all
| unusable, so the extreme examples don't really help at all.
| mike_d wrote:
| People get caught up in how many IPv6 addresses exist, as if we
| will always have enough to go around. Recently Capital One was
| assigned a /16, enough for every ATM in the US to be its own
| ISP and make its own customer allocations. We continue to
| repeat the same mistakes that made people believe we needed v6
| in the first place.
|
| We will never run out of IPv6, but I believe in my lifetime you
| won't be able to get new v6 allocations anymore because they
| will have all been handed out to the large corporations with
| deep pockets. Oops, no addresses left - but you can rent one
| from a cloud provider for a few dollars a month.
| wpm wrote:
| Then, we'll make IPv8, with 2^1024 address, which will be
| incompatible with IPv6 and IPv4 and all software on release,
| and will take decades before any appreciable uptake.
| Addresses will use hexadecimal, as well as the entire 4-byte
| Unicode table of emoji and Egyptian hieroglyphics, with octet
| separated by $ and { symbols for heightened readability.
| immibis wrote:
| No, we won't do that.
| zeristor wrote:
| I believe IPv8 does something else:
|
| https://py-ipv8.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
| tribler wrote:
| IPv8 dev here. Thnx for mentioning this.
|
| IETF draft standard of IPv8:
| https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-pouwelse-
| trustch...
|
| Bonus: "De-DSI" == LLM- based fuzzy search + IPv8
| DonHopkins wrote:
| The time the think of deploying IPv8 is BEFORE you've
| deployed something else.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYo0lVVH2wU
| tolien wrote:
| Yet there will still be comments asking why IPv8 can't be
| IPv4 with another few sets of digits tagged onto the end,
| as if that would somehow be compatible with the current
| implementation of IPv4.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I swear it is easier to argue with flat earthers than
| with people who want IPv4 but with more addresses.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| A /16 is the first quarter of the network prefix. That is
| indeed like assigning an IPv4 /8 to General Electric in 1985
| and then wondering why, 40 years later, we're out of address
| space.
| bolognafairy wrote:
| You're leaning heavily on "like" here. The address spaces
| are different. That's the point.
| icedchai wrote:
| Except, we're not actually "out" out. There is a very
| active IPv4 transfer / resale market. There is a LOT of
| unused or underused address space out there. I know one
| local firm with a completely unused /16 that they have not
| announced in years.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Recently Capital One was assigned a /16
|
| So besides the bad design ipv6 is also badly managed?
| kalaksi wrote:
| Wait until you see IPv4
| nottorp wrote:
| So why does 6 have to repeat 4's historical (and very
| publically recorded) mistakes?
| throw5959 wrote:
| People thought there was not enough bureaucracy and
| wonder why it's not improving after adding bureaucracy.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| No, it's ARIN that's badly managed.
|
| Capital One would never get a /16 in RIPE.
| oefrha wrote:
| Thanks, I missed this story. According to https://old.reddit.
| com/r/ipv6/comments/17yuqvp/til_capital_o..., the largest
| allocations by RIRs other than ARIN do not exceed /19, and
| those are for national telecom providers. Who are these ARIN
| people and how can they be held accountable for their idiotic
| management of public resources, which appear to be
| consistently terrible for decades?
| cesarb wrote:
| > We continue to repeat the same mistakes that made people
| believe we needed v6 in the first place.
|
| The IPv6 designers already thought of that and prepared for
| that eventuality. Only 1/8 of all available IPv6 addresses
| (the ones starting with the bits 001) is available for
| allocation under the current rules. If and when that gets
| exhausted, there will still be more than 5/8 of all IPv6
| addresses available to be allocated under more strict rules.
| (See https://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-
| space/ipv6-add... and https://www.rfc-
| editor.org/rfc/rfc3513.html#section-4 for more details.)
| icedchai wrote:
| The IPv6 address space is so huge, I, as an individual, was
| able to get a /44 no questions asked. Back in the 90's, I was
| able to get a IPv4 /24, no questions asked.
| auguzanellato wrote:
| There are only ~16.7 million /24s in IPv4 whereas there are
| more than 2000 /44 for every person living on planet earth,
| it's really a different scale.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| /44 is nothing. It's 16 /48s.
|
| I have a /32 as an individual that I also got no questions
| asked.
|
| It's more IPv6 space than I could ever use.
| cyberax wrote:
| Except that IPv6 is actually not that large. You effectively
| can't use networks that are smaller than /64, because stateless
| autoconfiguration can't use any other prefix size (there's an
| effort to fix it, but it'll take a decade at best)
| immibis wrote:
| You can absolutely use them, you just need static or DHCP
| addressing just like the old days. But thanks SLAAC for
| forcing my ISP to give me /64 or bigger so I can always
| subnet into /96 for example.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| How many devices actually support DHCPv6? SLAAC is pretty
| much the standard way of assigning addresses these days.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Just about anything with a screen these days. The biggest
| holdout is Android and a bunch of IoT stuff.
|
| SLAAC works on any device that supports DHCPv6, though,
| so you might as well use it if you don't have any
| requirements to favour DHCPv6
| ironhaven wrote:
| That was my whole point. There are not 2^128 ipv6 addresses
| for Individual use but there are 2^64 /64 networks.
|
| If you rent a vps with a ipv6 "address" you will see that you
| are given a /64 network.
|
| There is no effort to "fix" the bottom 64 bits because it's
| not needed. There are enough /56 networks to for the next 500
| years and 99% of people can do everything they need with an
| isp provided /56. IPv4 has survived with 48 bit nat for this
| long so 64 bit is even more buffer space
| jeroenhd wrote:
| > If you rent a vps with a ipv6 "address" you will see that
| you are given a /64 network.
|
| Unfortunately, I've seen multiple VPS providers that will
| assign you a single address within a /120 or something
| ridiculous like that.
|
| I presume whoever runs the network side of things with
| those VPS providers has never used IPv6 themselves or they
| must be _extremely_ stingy.
| cloudwalk9 wrote:
| Meanwhile my home ISP (Charter) will gladly give me a /60
| if I set my router to ask for one.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The thing is, there are just as many /28 IPv6 ranges as /28
| IPv4 ranges. And the experience with IPv4 is that it's those
| larger ranges that we've run out of the quickest. The whole
| power of IPv6 is that assigning a huge global business a /32
| gives them enough addresses to run more devices that exist on
| the whole Internet today. But if we're distributing large
| swaths of IPv6, we'll run out just the same, unless we try to
| later claw them back like we did with some IPv4 /8 spaces.
|
| Now, of course, a /28 in IPv4 is a tiny range, while a /28 in
| IPv6 is huge. And there are, of course, _a lot_ of /28s. The
| fear is only that we may start seeing larger and larger
| allocations for no good reason whatsoever. Apparently already
| some random private company (Capital One) has received a /16
| IPv6 range - this is an absurd allocation that should simply
| not be allowed if we don't want to have to move to a new IP
| version in a few decades.
| simne wrote:
| > does not accurately describe how large the ipv6
|
| It is not the limitation, but router hardware is.
|
| Now problem mostly eased, thanks to Moore law, but 20 years ago
| router memory need to store prefixes-routes graph was very
| expensive and have some problems with grow.
|
| For example, I know people, bought very expensive server PC
| boards (but cheap compared to enterprise networking hardware),
| with DDR2 capability, because it was fastest at that time and
| promises large RAM space.
|
| Imagine their frustration, when they seen, this hardware cannot
| allocate prefixes list for their installation (just not enough
| RAM) and they have to buy new hardware with DDR3.
|
| This even caused "curse of /24", when some providers decided to
| just discard /24 prefixes and work only with /16 directly and
| for smaller allocations use some default route.
|
| And this is just because nature of Internet, which is by
| definition "network of networks", mean, in ideal case all
| networks should have peer connections at least to all first
| circle neighbor networks, but better if have peers to few first
| circles, plus connections to large local hubs.
|
| And now problem become harder, because of grow of p2p
| solutions, which by definition avoid hub model and use all
| peers directly.
|
| BTW, colleague from telecom share latest problem - few days ago
| appear huge traffic. In very short time found source - after
| appear new "Stalker" game, their developers made huge number of
| fixes, so fixes are larger than installation, and they
| somewhere bought so powerful distribution network, distribution
| of fixes flooded all connections for few days.
| remram wrote:
| There are attempts to address that like LISP https://www.rfc-
| editor.org/rfc/rfc9300.html
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I feel like this blog does not accurately describe how large
| the ipv6 address space even after accounting for it being
| reduced by 2^64 for the host portion of the address._
|
| One way of thinking about it:
|
| * Stars in the Milky Way: 400 Billion
|
| * Galaxes in the universe: 2 Trillion
|
| So (4x10^11)x(2x10^12)=8x10^23 stars in the universe.
|
| * Size of IPv6 address space: 3.4x10^38
|
| Find the ratio between addresses and stars:
|
| * 3.4x10^38 / 8x10^23
|
| IPv6 offers about 430 trillion times more addresses than
| estimated stars in the universe. From Tom Coffee's presentation
| "An Enterprise IPv6 Address Planning Case-Study"
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tnh4upTOC4
|
| Perhaps in more human terms: on the surface of the Earth
| (including oceans), there are 8.4 IPv4 addresses per km^2. Not
| counting the oceans, that would be 28 IPv4 addresses per km^2
| land.
|
| IPv6 gives 10^17 addresses per mm^2 (yes, square millimeter).
|
| In terms of volume, 10^8 IPv6 addresses per mm^3 throughout the
| Earth.
|
| Another way of looking at it:
|
| *math property: x^y = x^(a+b) = (x^a)x(x^b)
|
| * IPv4 addresses are 32 bits (2^32)
|
| * 2^32 ~ 4.3 billion
|
| * So the IPv4 Internet has ~4.3B devices on it
|
| * IPv6 subnets are 64 bits, /64 (2^64)
|
| So, an IPv6 2^64 subnet is the same as (2^32)x(2^32), which
| means (4.3B)x(IPv4 Internet). I.e., a single IPv6 subnet can
| hold the equivalent of four billion (IPv4) Internets.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| Interesting to see how apparently low deployment of IP v6 we have
| achieved in Sweden. I wonder why.
| forty wrote:
| There seem to be some correlation between large population size
| and higher deployment. Maybe there are too few internet
| connections to be really worth it.
| dijit wrote:
| Oh, I know why!
|
| A combination of "getting there first" (and thus, a bunch of
| decaying infra that doesnt support v6- and needing it all
| updated) and the "free-net" thing where you can choose your ISP
| in some apartments.
|
| For those not in the know: internet is usually negotiated by
| your entire apartment building, but some (especially the
| largest rental building association "MKB") give you the choice
| to choose your provider.
|
| The way it actually works is complicated, but nobody will
| invest in this "open networks" system, so it is stuck in time
| fully, and even providers (like Bahnhof) who want to give v6:
| can't with that system.
|
| It seems hard to find info on the open network stuff, I know it
| all from a friend working at Bahnhof, here's at least part of
| it:
|
| - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5549139
|
| - https://www.stadsnatsportalen.se/pages/onapi (Swedish)
|
| - https://github.com/on-api/on-api
| birdman3131 wrote:
| The brown bar in the middle of a tiny column of text is very
| aggravating to read.
| sylware wrote:
| Desktop application, for classic client/server should allocate a
| transient IPv6 local address only for one session (namely a
| desktop policy system must give that right to user selected
| applications only), and I even wonder if browsing one site should
| not get its own IPv6. Ofc, the local ISP IPv6 router should be
| scaled for a reasonable domestic usage.
|
| Ofc, server like desktop applications should randomly choose an
| IPv6 there, but it has to stay stable since this number will have
| to be given to other people to connect to such server (I am
| talking dodging DNS $$$ racketeering or Big Tech "name<->IPv6"
| mapper service, aka for the smhol internet).
|
| Only if the ISP is providing a /64 prefix ofc.
|
| In my country, nearly 100% of domestic internet lines are working
| like that, and it has been the case for years. The main issue, is
| IPv6 on mobile internet: in my country most mobile internet has
| IPv6 enabled... but it seems you don't get a /64 prefix but a
| different /128 ip address at each authentication of your sim
| card.
|
| If it ends up not being a trick of my current IPv6 mobile
| internet modem, this is very bad, _REALLY_ bad: I cannot give a
| stable mobile internet IPv6 to my contacts for communication
| (sort of a phone number dedicated to them). Mechanically, it will
| force people to use classic centralized client-server services,
| hence force people into Big Tech.
| exabrial wrote:
| I do want to point out one thing that is a common misconception
| by IT engineer types:
|
| > The use of NATs force the interactions into client-initiated
| transactions... (abbreviated)
|
| There is absolutely ZERO chance that that, let's say Roomba, is
| going to let you connect directly to your vacuum robot at your
| home, from your cell, over ipv6, without going through their
| proxy server in an AWS Datacenter in Virgina.
|
| The nativity of engineers is face-palm inducing.
|
| Roomba will _never_ give up that control over your device. Same
| with your Tesla, your iPhone, your security cameras, or your ring
| doorbell. Zilch, none, nada. Giving you direct control, even if
| ipv6 were fully implemented, is simply not on the roadmap for the
| companies. They want to control you. They want to control your
| devices. They will not release the death grip on this, as it
| releases their control over your property post purchase.
|
| This sounds incredibly cynical but it's playing out in front of
| us. By restricting the use of their services, they now control
| and downstream resale of the device and can force people to buy
| new, rather than repair or renovate. And of course the leaders in
| all of this anti-repair initiatives are the so called "Green"
| companies of the world.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I connected my AC directly to my desktop. I can't be sure it
| isn't also phoning home, but I know I am controlling it without
| a remote server.
|
| You are doing a "there can only be one binding constraint"
| analysis, and I don't think that is get. Yes, a lot of
| incumbents want client-server only, but IPv4 still gives them
| power enforcing the status quo. If we had IPv6 everywhere, they
| would need to try harder to enforce it, and we would have to
| try less hard to change it.
| xxpor wrote:
| You've picked a particularly poor example. You can directly
| connect to the MQTT server in your roomba today:
| https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/roomba/
| exabrial wrote:
| Indeed I did, that's hilarious
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Just add another four digits to the start of IPv4. Treat any IP
| of the current length as 0000.CurrentIP.
| dboreham wrote:
| That was easy.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| One thing I've wondered is how routing will work out in the long
| term for IPv6.
|
| If I recall correctly, IPv6 routing was supposed to be
| hierarchical based on ISP and region, and that would help routing
| tables. But what if companies in the US, for example, buy a /19
| and then divide it up and use it across the globe?
|
| I assume routers will have to come with a lot more RAM.
| wmf wrote:
| _IPv6 routing was supposed to be hierarchical..._
|
| The Internet gave up on that a while ago. IPv6 routing works
| like IPv4 where people just advertise whatever routes they
| want. Router RAM has been fixed with newer HBM-based ASICs
| supporting millions of routes.
| bananamango wrote:
| Are there any stats showing how many individual devices we have
| now on Internet (estimation of public+private IPv4 used)?
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(page generated 2025-01-12 23:01 UTC)