Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

According to the internet will run out of IP addresses some time in 2011. Will the internet stop working then? Most likely not, its just that no new ip address can be assigned until IPv6, for "version six" is adopted, and will add more digits to the ip addressing scheme.

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Short answer to ’s question: the Internet didn’t “stop” when the last central IPv4 blocks were handed out — what changed was the supply model and the urgency to deploy IPv6. IANA’s remaining free pool was distributed to the five Regional Internet Registries in early February 2011, which moved the ecosystem from “we have spare IPv4 to hand out” to “we must run coexistence and migration strategies.” (nro.net)

Why you shouldn’t panic (and why was right to be sceptical about Chicken‑Little headlines): operators planned for this for years. The normal outcome was gradual co‑existence (dual‑stack), rationing/transfers of IPv4, and a set of transition/translation options so services kept working while IPv6 adoption grew. For networks and service providers the practical choices include dual‑stack, IPv6‑only underlay with IPv4-as-a-service (DS‑Lite, 464XLAT, NAT64/DNS64) or selective tunnelling — each has tradeoffs. (ftp.ripe.net)

What asked about — concrete changes you’ll actually need:

  • Infrastructure: ask your ISP about native IPv6; enable dual‑stack on routers and CPE where possible.
  • DNS: add AAAA records and ensure reverse ip6.arpa is set for authoritative name servers.
  • Firewalls: duplicate/translate IPv4 rules to IPv6 (iptables‑ip6tables / nftables / vendor equivalents).
  • Applications: remove IPv4‑only assumptions and use modern APIs (getaddrinfo/getnameinfo, AF_INET6‑aware code) so your software handles both address families.
  • Testing: check addresses and reachability with ip -6 addr, ping6/traceroute6, dig AAAA, curl -6.
    The socket/DNS API guidance and migration notes are covered in the IPv6 socket API RFC and operator deployment guides. (rfc-editor.org)

Notes and cautions: automatic tunnelling (anycast 6to4) caused operational problems and was formally deprecated — don’t rely on it for production. Use provider‑managed IPv6 or tested tunnel brokers only as a stopgap, and run live tests (for example: test‑ipv6 sites and the resources linked from ISOC/APNIC/RIPE) before making IPv6 public. (rfc-editor.org)

Quick checklist: talk to your ISP, enable dual‑stack in staging, add AAAA + firewall rules, run the simple tests above, and update any code that treats IPs as 32‑bit integers. If you want, the community threads here (and the APNIC/RIPE guides) are good next reading. (apnic.net)

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Member Avatar for happygeek

According to the internet will run out of IP addresses some time in 2011.

Is the author one Chicken Little by any chance AD?

I've been reading 'news' stories based around IPv6 stating that the Internet is about to run out of addresses for, what, at least five years now and quite possibly even ten.

It's one of those subjects that tech journos keep as a spare for when there is no real news to report but the Editor wants some space filled anyway :)

All in my never humble opinion, of course!

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

There seems to be quite a bit of discussion about this topic, and it seems logical that with 32-bit IP addresses we would run out of them some time.

This is a topic I just came across -- if its old news then probably not something anyone would want to write an article about here at DaniWeb.

Member Avatar for happygeek

There's no doubt that the address space will reach capacity at some point, trouble is that every six months or so there's some vendor or other which has the media getting their collective panties in a bunch that the time is real soon and the media bites.

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

I guess that sounds like some of those "the world is coming to an end" theories. Yes it will, but when is anyone's guess.

Member Avatar for happygeek

Yep. That said, ICANN and ISOC are making a joint announcement about the matter this week - so that could be interesting.

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

Just heard about this topic on TV a couple minutes ago. They (whoever that is) has handed out the last remaining addresses under the current addressing scheme.

Member Avatar for jlego

i too, like other posters, have heard this same story since of maybe 2000

Member Avatar for jlego

if it runs out of addresses, i, am happy that i already have a few statics :)

Member Avatar for jlego

In IPv4, which uses 4x bytes or 32 bits, there is a theoretical maximum of 4,294,967,296 IP addresses. In IPv6, which attempts to resolve the address shortage, uses 128bits, giving a maximum of ~ 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,770,000,000 addresses.

how do you pronounce that number?

heres my question, ok. we need to switch to ipv6 probably sometime soon. I know there has been ipv6 implementations in os and networking devices, it isnt a new technology and there are preperations for it.

but i have never actually seen someone implement IPv6. what kind of adaptions and changes are we going to have to make with firewalls, software, websites, DNS records, and so on.

is IPv4 and IPv6 going to place nice together?


fe80:0:0:0:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf IPv6
IPv4

Member Avatar for WaltP

340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,770,000,000 addresses.

how do you pronounce that number?

340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463 quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 770 million

Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

Are all the operating systems in the whole world which are connected to the internet going to have to be changed in order to implement IPv6? Or will the first 128 bit address going to break the entire internet?

Member Avatar for jlego

i wouldthink that they would have to migrate everything almost at the same time though. i am more than likely wrong however.

Member Avatar for happygeek

340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463 quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 770 million

Actualy, it's 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463 quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 770 million and 1.

I bet they have a spare in order to avoid the IPv4 thing all over again... :)

Edited by happygeek because: n/a
Member Avatar for Nick Evan

how do you pronounce that number

Like this:

A lot

Member Avatar for jlego

Lol

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