Well friends, it seems that time has finally come. We’ve been talking about it for more than a decade. But now it has finally come true. We are out of IPv4 address space and we finally need to move to IPv6.
We all knew this day would come, but we just didn’t know when.
We tried to put off the inevitable – but as the world has grown and the use of the Internet has continued to surge so has the demand in IP address space.
More and more devices are created each and every day that need network connectivity. Every TV in my house now has a network connection.. desktops, laptops, game consoles, tablets, phones, security cameras, thermostats… and soon refrigerators and toasters will need ip addresses.
It’s no wonder we’re out of IP space.
As posted in an article on Slashdot today –
“The RIPE NCC, the Regional Internet Registry for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, distributed the last blocks of IPv4 address space from the available pool. This means they are now distributing IPv4 address space to Local Internet Registries (LIRs) from the last /8. An ISP may receive one /22 allocation (1,024 IPv4 addresses), even if they can justify a larger allocation. This /22 allocation will only be made to LIRs if they have already received an IPv6 allocation from an upstream LIR or the RIPE NCC. Time to move to IPv6!”
For many company’s who operate internationally, this is old news and many have already migrated to IPv6… at least for offices in these regions. Many more companies have internal initiatives for either migrating or or tunneling IPv6 through out their environments
But the big question is when do the remaining regions of the world run out?
Or maybe a better question is “Have we the truly run out of IP space or are there too many organizations simply squatting on large blocks of IP space?”
This latter question seems more closer to the truth. RIPE really needs to do a better job of auditing these big companies and taking back unused IP space that can not be justified. The problem with this is that RIPE has no teeth and large corporations know this.
But for many companies migrating to IPv6 isn’t an easy task. There are still a large number of network engineers who don’t know IPv6 well enough to deploy it or have not had the experience necessary to tackle a job like this.
Either way it looks like we all maybe getting a crash course in IPv6.
What are your thoughts? Have you migrated to IPv6? How comfortable are you working with IPv6?
Leave a comment below and let us know!
2 comments
Out of IPs? We just bought a /24 directly from ARIN and we aren’t even an ISP. I also agree with Fazal. Until the ISPs are more on board with it it won’t happen. While setting up BGP we wanted to use IPv6 and our ISP basically laughed at us. This is a nationwide ISP too.
Well, I’m running it at home via HE’s TunnelBroker. US ISPs are real sticks in the mud in terms of offering IPv6 connectivity, with the laudable exception of Comcast.