amuck-landowner

What happens when there are no more ipv4 addresses left?

Coastercraze

Top Thrill
Verified Provider
Look at those /8 IPv6 nets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks
e.g.: "19.0.0.0/8 Ford Motor Company" 16 million ips...

It may happen that all are assigned - but they are not used.

Not sure about Ford directly, but a lot of the older car plants have legacy equipment that isn't exactly capable of using IPv6. To redo an entire line would be expensive and not to mention would take time for each and every plant that would need it.
@wlanboy put a 6 instead of a 4. Legacy configurations/equipment do not need IPV6, they can change their software to use 10.0.0.0/8 instead of legacy ranges.

If I owned a legacy block, there's no way I'd hand it back considering 2/3 of the IPs would probably go to hoarders.
Which would still require a redo of the line. To put into perspective how big a line is, it takes approximately 16 hrs for a car to reach the end of the line and be driven off the line.

I wouldn't want to hand it back either. 
 

qps

Active Member
Verified Provider
Look at those /8 IPv6 nets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks
e.g.: "19.0.0.0/8 Ford Motor Company" 16 million ips...

It may happen that all are assigned - but they are not used.

Not sure about Ford directly, but a lot of the older car plants have legacy equipment that isn't exactly capable of using IPv6. To redo an entire line would be expensive and not to mention would take time for each and every plant that would need it.
@wlanboy put a 6 instead of a 4. Legacy configurations/equipment do not need IPV6, they can change their software to use 10.0.0.0/8 instead of legacy ranges.

If I owned a legacy block, there's no way I'd hand it back considering 2/3 of the IPs would probably go to hoarders.
Which would still require a redo of the line. To put into perspective how big a line is, it takes approximately 16 hrs for a car to reach the end of the line and be driven off the line.

I wouldn't want to hand it back either. 
It's also more than just the manufacturing equipment.  Every computer, printer/scanner/copier, phone, server, firewall, router, etc. has at least one of these addresses.

Unless there is a significant financial incentive for them to renumber, they aren't going to do it.  And even if there is a significant financial incentive, they would probably want to incorporate it into an already planned future upgrade cycle so it doesn't disrupt business activity, which would likely delay action since most of these companies only upgrade every 3 to 7 years.  I'm not sure the current IPv4 values on the secondary market for larger blocks are going to encourage much activity.  If values go up a bit more, it could start to get interesting for some of these companies.
 

astutiumRob

New Member
Verified Provider
Does this mean that people will not be able to host more websites in a couple years or that the cost will increase a lot so they can be accessed over ipv4?

Multiple sites can (for over 10 years now!) share the same IPv4 address, so the 'hosting' side of things isn't really going to be an issue - hostees will always be able to find a provider.

What will start to cause problems is when services/sites/systems _choose_ to only deliver their content over IPv6, which could preclude those connecting with v4 only to "miss out"
 

wlanboy

Content Contributer

Multiple sites can (for over 10 years now!) share the same IPv4 address, so the 'hosting' side of things isn't really going to be an issue - hostees will always be able to find a provider.

What will start to cause problems is when services/sites/systems _choose_ to only deliver their content over IPv6, which could preclude those connecting with v4 only to "miss out"
Services will be behind nat/proxies. I don't believe that a database or a worker does need an ipv4 address.
There are enough service bus technologies out there to connect different services. You have  64k ports so that is enough - even for versioning.
What I see is that more and more sites are simple static html using js to do the communication with the backend.
Add Cloudflare (and similar services) into the mix which do ipv4/ipv6 tunneling and you do not need a single ipv4 address.
 

VpsAG

New Member
I do hope that we can migrate to ipv6 and let ipv4 as a remnant of the past. I am sure that they will still be here for at least 20 years, until all devices that work only on ipv4 will be morally surpassed. Let's hope that they do not have an infinite shelf life. As to answer your question, I do not think that any Y2K problem will arise from the depletion of ipv4 IPs. 
 

HN-Matt

New Member
Verified Provider
Now that they've run out, the question is how many IPv4 are actually in use and how many are just dormant and going to waste in X's hoarding space?
 
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Scudlayer

New Member
Verified Provider
All depends from the IPv4 price rising. When it becomes high enough to justify the efforts of migration for many isp (In some case, IPv4 are worth more than the VPS), the transition to IPv6 will be more rapid.
 

GIANT_CRAB

New Member
IPV6 is coming. we don't have to worry about that.

IPv6 isn't coming, it ALREADY is here. The issue is that majority of the ISPs still refuse to implement IPv6 and are relying on carrier grade NAT w/o IPv6. Many of these ISPs also have lousy excuses such as not having IPv6 equipment and deployment being difficult. IPv6 was out long ago and planning for implementation should have been done long ago. Same goes for the actual implementation.

It just seems that being human, we don't see any urgency to important things until it is too late. IPv6 might be one of them, and maybe global warming too.
 

HN-Matt

New Member
Verified Provider
IPV6 is coming. we don't have to worry about that.

IPv6 isn't coming, it ALREADY is here. The issue is that majority of the ISPs still refuse to implement IPv6 and are relying on carrier grade NAT w/o IPv6. Many of these ISPs also have lousy excuses such as not having IPv6 equipment and deployment being difficult. IPv6 was out long ago and planning for implementation should have been done long ago. Same goes for the actual implementation.
It may also be that many don't know what to make of IPv6 superabundance. Might feel overwhelming to be on the receiving end of such large allocations, not to mention the new & confusing 128 bit formatting.

It just seems that being human, we don't see any urgency to important things until it is too late. IPv6 might be one of them, and maybe global warming too.
Yeah, hopefully the way humans relate to fossil fuels doesn't end up manifesting analogously in the IPv4 market.
 
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OnSebastian

New Member
Verified Provider
My ISP does not have compatibility with ipv6 and they do not have plans to make it work when I asked. Does this mean that people will not be able to host more websites in a couple years or that the cost will increase a lot so they can be accessed over ipv4?

I don't think anyone will have real problems hosting websites in near future. But just for you, I would recommend switching to a different ISP as every ISP should have IPv6 ready already or atleast plans to when it will be available.
 

keanu

New Member
ISP's are slowly implementing IPv6, at least mine did. Costs for IPv4 will go up, and switching to IPv6 will become cheaper.
Infrastructure is already there so we should see a slow movement towards IPv6 and the phasing out of IPv4.
 

brookesdjb

New Member
You can use a provider like Hurricane Electric who offer free ip6 Tunnels. Follow the instructions on the site to set up a tunnel with your router/computer and it will tunnel ip6 over ip4, and allow you to use ip6 addresses on your local lan, and access ip6 sites on the web. I use a routerboard as my router, and Virgin Media my ISP doesn't support IP6 yet, so this works great for me. Its totally free and you can normally expect about 20Mb/s speed from it. Free account and instructions here: https://tunnelbroker.net
 

SkyNetHosting

New Member
Hello.


IPV6 already supported by most ISP's and OS and control panels such as cPanel, so this is really not going to be a problem. Most budget DC's are now offering servers with just 1 IPV4 IP along with IPV^ IP's.
 

shapehost

New Member
Verified Provider
There is no such thing as running out of IPv4.


There is math that says we are going to run out or we are already doing that, but if you do better calculations you'll see that is not true. With the time, many providers will get to IPv6 technology and will leave millions of IPv4 behind.
 

3v-manager

New Member
I think, when the no more IPv4 address, it will develop IPv6. And then willn't shortage of addresses for a long time.
 
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