It's the end of IPv4 as we know it...

[strawman]

Today the Number Resource Organization (NRO), the body which represents the five
Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) announced the final five remaining address
blocks (one /8 block containing approximately 16.5 million IP addresses) were shared
equally among the world’s five regions.

This event indicates a key milestone in IPv4 exhaustion; the Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority’s (IANA) store of unallocated IPv4 address space is now fully
depleted and only the regional free pools remain unallocated.

(emphasis mine)

It won't affect individuals in the near term. Mac, Linux, and Windows all support the newest TCP/IP standard, IPv6 (which has about as many addresses as there are atoms in the known universe). Eventually our ISPs will be telling us that they route IPv6 packets natively, and eventually you'll see routers and other network gear on the shelf that say, "IPv6 enabled" or whatever marketing term they're going to use.

The main people that will be affected are new ISPs and companies that might need a few thousand addresses to start up, and eventually IPv4 address brokering will become a pretty profitable business.

Still, it's a very significant technical milestone for the internet. We were only able to last this long due to network address translation (NAT) that's included in every router you buy for your home these days, and which most businesses now use for employee internet access. Without that we would have run out of IP addresses during or shortly after the dot-com boom at the end of the 90's.

 

[Biannoshufu]

Hmm. Thanks for this informative clarification. I've been wondering what this really meant.

 

[PatrThom]

Depending on how old y'all are, this is almost as much of a big deal as when UHF added channels 14-83 to televisions, or when CB's gained channels 24-40, or when analog cell phone service was turned off (or when analog television service was turned off, for that matter!). People with IPv4-only routers will only be able to talk to other IPv4 people (unless some legacy compatibility thing in the middle does some spiffy translation), which will be fewer and fewer ISPs as time goes on.

Going IPv6 will solve the IP address problem the same way that adding area codes solved the telephone problem...except that instead of increasing the available number of phone numbers by a factor of 1000x, it will increase the number of available IP addresses 2^96-fold, or 79228162514264337593543950336 (!) times larger than the current IPv4 pool. This is supposed to guarantee that we have enough IP addresses for all our tech gadgets for the forseeable future. I have heard it said that this would allow every human on earth to give each of the cells in our bodies its own independent IP address and there would still be plenty left over.

Basically it means an end to figuring out how NAT works (since it will no longer be necessary) unless you need to hide a bunch of IPv4-only devices behind a single IPv6 address. And then it'll be your own fault for not upgrading to IPv6-capable equipment.

--Patrick

 

[drifter]

Guess I'll need to flash my router after all.

 

[strawman]

People with IPv4-only routers will only be able to talk to other IPv4 people (unless some legacy compatibility thing in the middle does some spiffy translation), which will be fewer and fewer ISPs as time goes on.

There are established ways for people to get to IPv6 networks over their IPv4 routers and ISPs (teredo is one). As long as one's OS supports IPv6 and they do a small amount of configuration they'll be fine, and one can start using this right now.

Until webservers start going to IPv6 it's really not going to be an issue. I can see that happening in developing countries that are still building up their infrastructure (especially since they won't be burdened by old equipment) since they simply won't be able to get ahold of any IPv4 space.

Further, IPv6 has been around and thoroughly tested for nearly a decade now, so most of the equipment ISPs and backbone providers have purchased over the last few years already support it.

I don't expect it to be a big deal at all for end users. Google, amazon, etc aren't going to be unreachable.