All IPv4 addresses allocated - why it isn't a problem

[Piru]

As you might have read all IPv4 addresses have now been allocated. There however are some misconceptions as to what this means: Many seem to think that it is also end of the IPv4 network and that unless if the OS and software of your choice supports IPv6 you couldn't connect to internet. This notion is false.

IPv4 addresses have now all been reserved, but they're far from being all used. Huge spans of the IPv4 range were allocated by large corporations during the early years of internet. These companies have now precious commodity to sell, and a market of 3rd party IPv4 address ranges will emerge.

While new IPv4 addresses cannot be allocated any more, it doesn't mean that they wouldn't be available to end users. ISPs have the address spaces they've allocated earlier, and will continue to use them. IPv4 isn't going to disappear anytime soon, either. Large companies and service providers (such as say google) cannot switch to IPv6 alone anytime soon. They'd be shutting off huge portion of the internet by doing that. It is very likely that IPv4 will be used for decades, still.

Even if your ISP would eventually switch to IPv6, they'd still be offering a way to connect older IPv4 systems. This could be provided by the DSL boxen, by doing a transparent translation between IPv4 <-> IPv6. Full switch to IPv6 requires that both the TCP/IP and the software support the new addressing scheme. There are ton of old software that won't work with IPv6. This is yet another reason why such emulation layer will remain part of the internet experience for decades.

In short: You will be able to connect to internet by using your old Miami, AmiTCP or other "old" TCP/IP stack just fine. There's no hurry to get native IPv6 support.

[MelbourneBen]

Good to know, thanks for the update.

[sim085]

Interesting to read

[zylesea]

Even if your ISP would eventually switch to IPv6, they'd still be offering a way to connect older IPv4 systems. This could be provided by the DSL boxen, by doing a transparent translation between IPv4 <-> IPv6. Full switch to IPv6 requires that both the TCP/IP and the software support the new addressing scheme. There are ton of old software that won't work with IPv6. This is yet another reason why such emulation layer will remain part of the internet experience for decades.

That's the point. And I don't see any forseeable scenario where an IPv4 subnetwork will not be sufficient for homenetwork users and mid sized companies.

[Daedalus]

@zylesea

Unless you have 4.3 billion devices in your home network

[Colani1200]

Piru, while I honestly wish you were right, I doubt that it is all that easy and that it is safe to ignore IPv6.

There are several strong boosters in the IPv6 business recently, for example the booming smart phone market. On 3g today, you typically get a private RFC 1918 IP and are NATed at your provider's gateway, mostly because of address shortage. This "AOL style" internet may work for most things, but will give you headaches with certain services (e.g. VPN, P2P). For mobile carriers, IPv6 is the solution to offer "true internet" for mobile devices.

Another example are the the newly industrializing countries. True that existing ISPs have the address spaces they've allocated earlier, but what about new ISPs? And I honestly don't see companies like IBM sell large portions of their networks.

I think from the moment on where the first (important) services on the internet are IPv6 only (and the moment will come for sure), we will see quite a fast erosion regarding the acceptance and propagation of IPv4.

[Piru]

I think from the moment on where the first (important) services on the internet are IPv6 only (and the moment will come for sure), we will see quite a fast erosion regarding the acceptance and propagation of IPv4.

No business will risk losing customers by terminating IPv4 services before major IPv6 penetration. This won't happen anytime soon. The impending doom of IPv4 and the IPv6 proliferation has been preached since 90s. In reality miniscule fraction of services are available in IPv6 currently. We'll see how b0rked and scattered the IPv6 currently is during the world IPv6 day.

[Colani1200]

No business will risk losing customers by terminating IPv4 services before major IPv6 penetration. This won't happen anytime soon. The impending doom of IPv4 and the IPv6 proliferation has been preached since 90s.

Sure, but now peak IP is finally there. The discussion will get a different quality from now on.

[Fats]

Huge spans of the IPv4 range were allocated by large corporations during the early years of internet. These companies have now precious commodity to sell, and a market of 3rd party IPv4 address ranges will emerge.

This will maybe a stop gap for a few months or years. But that is it.

In short: You will be able to connect to internet by using your old Miami, AmiTCP or other "old" TCP/IP stack just fine. There's no hurry to get native IPv6 support.

IPv6 only sites will popup but is mostly likely to happen first in the Asian region. That is probably not that much of a problem for us in the Western world.
There is no urgent need and current web sites will likely keep their IPv4 addresses so current web sites will be still accessible; that is true. But people who don't get access to IPv6 in the coming years will gradually have access to a smaller part of internet. Some ISP may offer some IPv4 to IPv6 gateways to circumvent this.

greets,
Staf.