Geoff Huston, the chief researcher at the internet registry APNIC, predicted that IPv4 addresses would run out in 2020. In this new series of materials, we will refresh the information on how addresses were depleted, who still has them, and why it happened.
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Why Addresses Are Running Out
Before we delve into how the IPv4 pool 'dried up', let's discuss the reasons. In 1983, when TCP/IP was implemented, 32-bit addressing was used. At that time, , that 4.3 billion addresses for 4.5 billion people were quite sufficient. However, developers did not take into account that the world’s population would nearly double and that the internet would gain widespread adoption.
During the 80s, many organizations acquired more addresses than they actually needed. Some companies continue to use public addresses for servers that operate exclusively on local networks. The proliferation of mobile technologies, the Internet of Things, and virtualization fueled the issue. Miscalculations in estimating the number of hosts on the global network and ineffective address allocation led to the IPv4 shortage.
How Addresses Ran Out
In the early 2000s, APNIC director Paul Wilson , predicted that IPv4 addresses would be depleted within the next ten years. Overall, his prediction turned out to be quite accurate.
2011: As Wilson had predicted, the internet registry APNIC (responsible for the Asia-Pacific region) was left with the last . The organization implemented a new rule — one 1024-address block per entity. Analysts say that without this restriction, the /8 block would have run out in a month. Now, APNIC has only a small number of addresses left.
2012: The European internet registry RIPE announced the depletion of its pool. It also began distributing the last /8 block. The organization followed in the footsteps of APNIC and instituted strict limits on the allocation of IPv4 addresses. By 2015, RIPE had just 16 million free addresses left. Today, this number has significantly decreased to . It's worth noting that in 2012 Global telecommunications operators have activated a new protocol for some of their clients. Among the first were AT&T, Comcast, Free Telecom, Internode, XS4ALL, and others. Meanwhile, Cisco and D-Link have enabled IPv6 by default in the settings of their routers.
A couple of fresh materials from our blog on Habr:
2013: Jeff Haston from APNIC in the blog , that IPv4 addresses at the American registrar ARIN will run out in the second half of 2014. Around the same time, ARIN representatives , stated that they had only two /8 blocks left.
2015: ARIN the first registrar to fully exhaust its pool of available IPv4 addresses. All companies in this region queued up, waiting for someone to release unused IPs.
2017: The halt in the issuance of addresses by the registrar LACNIC, responsible for countries in Latin America. Now a block. AFRINIC, which is responsible for the African region, has also introduced restrictions on address issuance. The assignment of addresses is strictly evaluated, and the maximum quantity obtainable by one entity is limited.
2019: Today, all registrars have a relatively small number of addresses left. The pools are maintained by periodically returning unused addresses to circulation. For example, at MIT 14 million IP addresses. More than half of them decided to resell to needy companies.
What's Next
There is a belief that IPv4 addresses by February 2020. After that, internet providers, network equipment manufacturers, and other companies — to migrate to IPv6 or work with .
Network Address Translation (NAT) allows transforming multiple local addresses into one external address. The maximum number of ports is 65,000. Theoretically, the same number of local addresses can be mapped to a single public address (not considering some limitations of specific NAT implementations).
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Internet providers can turn to specialized solutions — Carrier Grade NAT. They allow for centralized management of local and external subscriber addresses and limit the number of TCP and UDP ports available to clients. Thus, ports are distributed more efficiently among users, plus there is protection against DDoS attacks.
The disadvantages of NAT include potential problems with firewalls. All user sessions go out to the network using a single public address. This means that only one client can simultaneously work with websites that provide access to services via IP. Furthermore, the resource may think it is under a DoS attack and deny access to all clients.
An alternative to NAT is the transition to IPv6. There will be enough of these addresses for a long time, plus it has several advantages. For example, it includes a built-in IPSec component that encrypts individual data packets.
Currently, IPv6 is used by only 14.3% of websites worldwide. Several factors hinder the widespread adoption of this protocol, including the cost of migration, lack of backward compatibility, and technical complexities during implementation.
We will talk about this next time.
What we write about in the VAS Experts corporate blog:
Source: habr.com
