The IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) assigned the 38/8 and 106/8 blocks to APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) who controls IPs allocated in countries such as Austrilia.  A /8 block of IP addresses contains approximately 16 million addresses.  This left 5 /8 blocks of IPs left and as per the IANA exhaustion policy, the final 5 blocks of IP addresses were given to each of the IP management organizations that manage IP addresses for each region of the world.

NOTE: Think of an IP address like a telephone number or a mailing address.  Computers use IP addresses to locate other computers and give computers homes on the internet.

Although the blocks have been alocated to regional organizations that manage the IP address pool, this doesn’t mean the Internet has broke or actually ran out of IP addresses.  The allocation organizations are constantly assigning and reassigning IP addresses to corporations and end users, and these organizations have not completely assigned / used up all of the available addresses yet, but its going to happen soon.

To delay this day, many big corporations have given up many of their massive IP allocations (that are mostly wasted), and more IP addresses will likely be returned to the pool.  Unfortunately, this will only delay the true exhaustion of IPv4 so a solution needs to be in place now.

It is quite funny, but many technologists have seen this day coming for a long time.  Back in the mid-late 1990′s, IPv6 was born.  Unlike IPv4 which contains roughly 4 billion total addresses, IPV6 contains trillions of IP Addresses.  It has been rumored that IPv6 could address every grain of sand on our planet, so I seriously doubt that IPv6 will ever have to be replaced.

With a solution in place, why the heck aren’t we using it?  Well, IPv6 has some backwards compatibility problems with IPv4 and this means that both IPv4 and v6 need to run simultaneously (typically configured as a dual stack on routers).  Additionally, much of the hardware that powers the internet today also needs to be upgraded, and many providers are slow at brining up IPv6 connectivity.  Fortunately, most new operating systems and computers support both IPv4 and IPv6 so that when the switch is done by ISPs, most users will be ready.

I’ve personally been keeping a close eye on the IPv6 deployment.  Since I have several servers in datacenters, I will be one of the first people migrating to the new internet since servers have to be reachable on IPv6 for a transistion by end users to work.  I’m quite confident that I will be ready in the next 4 months to announce that FamousPhil and Matthouse have supported IPv6 connectivity!

To see if you have IPv6 connectivity, I’d suggest trying to load http://ipv6.facebook.com.  If this loads, you have IPv6 connectivity, otherwise you don’t.  If you don’t, it is possible to use a tunnel broker from Hurricane Electric that is free.  This tunnel broker works by inserting a few commands into a command prompt since IPv6 tunneling is built into Windows 7 and Centos 5.5 (and probably other OS’s).  I’ve been playing around with it, but there really isn’t much on the IPv6 internet to see yet (only about 8% of the Internet is IPv6 compatible).

Finally, do you remember the DTV days when America would run tests where everyone would only broadcast in the new digital television format?  The same thing is going to happen for the internet.  On June 8, 2011, IPv6 test day will happen when all the major providers turn off IPv4 connectivity for 24 hours to test IPv6 connectivity.  With this and the exhaustion of IPv4 yesterday, I’m very hopeful that everyone begins quickly moving to IPv6 so that the internet doesn’t come to a screetching halt in respect to growth.

You may be asking what the heck does the movement to save the environment have to do with an IP title.  IP stands for Internet Protocol and the internet runs on this protocol (means of communication).  When using IP, your computer uses an address that makes it reachable by all other computers in the world.  Normally, you can think of IP as the United States Postal Service (USPS) and an IP Address as your mailing address or P.O. box.  The internet currently uses 2 major versions of IP, version 4 and version 6.  IP version 4 has been around since the dawn of the internet and can support a little over 4 billion computer addresses at once.  Due to special addresses within the IP version 4 range, only about 2 billion of these addresses are actually usable.  Due to this limitation, IP version 6 was born around 10 years ago to support a much bigger address system (it still has a limit, but its far bigger than anything could ever use).  The problem is, IP version 6 is going to be a pain to shift to because it will require everyone to switch at once.  Most system admins believe in not fixing something unless its broke, which could hinder this a lot.

Quite a few years back, there were a few ranges of ip addresses that were reserved to be private addresses.  This means that if you used a private address, no router on the internet would accept traffic from this range of addresses and forward it onto other networks.  This allowed for the usual wireless router at home with that all too familiar ip address 192.168.0.1 or something similar.  I’m sure if you’ve ever touched one of these, you would see that number somewhere in the documentation.  The idea of this is to put a bunch of computers behind a single internet ip version 4 address and allow all the computers to communicate with the internet without actually needing to be directly on the internet.  This process is called Network Address Translation (NAT) and all routers practice this.  the 192.168.0.x range allows for 255 computers to be connected simultaneously.  For bigger networks in need of more addresses, there is the 10.x.x.x where x is a variable number from 1-255.  This allows for many more computers, about 16 milion addresses to be a bit more precise.

Technically, using all 10.x.x.x network addresses on the internet, we could likely last a long time to come without requiring IP version 6. So, why don’t we use more private addressing?

I asked myself a very good question, and my answer is that I don’t know.  Obviously, we need to have public IP addresses to some degree to allow for websites, virtual private network gateways, and other services to the internet.  Putting internet accessible services behind NAT devices would knock out the entire internet.  On the other hand (and the main purpose of this post) is that there are several universities and companies and institutions that horde public IP addresses and do absolutely nothing with them.

A prime example of this hording can be seen here at the University at Buffalo.  UB owns a class B block of ip addresses 128.205.x.x and recently licensed another block of ip addresses in another range to support their continued growth.  Normally I wouldn’t be against this, but UB is in a tight position because the state government is failing at maintaining a good budget and IP addresses now cost a lot since there aren’t many left.  UB probably gets a volume discount, but for me, I pay $20/year for each public IP address that I am assigned and most of that cost goes directly to the naming corporation that handles all IP addresses.  This is a classic supply and demand problem.  Also, UB firewalls most of their IP addresses entirely, I can name no more than 20 computers on the UB network as a whole that I’ve accesses that absolutely need access to the internet (Web servers, etc).  The rest of the UB network computers are holding onto valuable public IP addresses that are 100% fire walled and inaccessible from the outside world.  Why does UB waste money and horde IP addresses that it doesn’t need?

Many other universities like Berkley, and Princeton have similar sizes of IP address blocks and I’m sure that they do the same basic stuff.  Now onto the ISPs.  Wildblue and Verizon both assign public unfirewalled IP addresses to their customers.  I can see why they might do this, but really, do customers need a public IP address just to potentially compromise the network and the internet computers around them?  Probably not.

I really feel that public IP addresses should only be handled by the major internet providers and datacenters that handle internet accessible servers.  Private companies that want real IP addresses should need to justify the use of those addresses.  If this was enacted, I’m sure that the internet addressing crisis would be a lot less of a problem.

Nat can definitely be the key to fixing the problem, but first, these big institutions that horde IP addresses need to give those addresses up and use them as they need them, just like many of the major hosting companies currently do.