Geoff Huston, chief research engineer at APNIC Internet Registrar, has predicted that IPv4 addresses will run out in 2020. In the new series of materials, we will refresh the information on how the addresses were depleted, who still had them and why it happened.
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Why do addresses run out
Before moving on to the story of how the IPv4 pool dried up, let's talk a little about the reasons. In 1983, the introduction of TCP/IP used 32-bit addressing. While that 4,3 billion addresses for 4,5 billion people is enough. But then the developers did not take into account that the world's population will almost double, and the Internet will become widespread.
At the same time, in the 80s, many organizations received more addresses than they really needed. A number of companies still use public addresses for servers that operate exclusively on local networks. The spread of mobile technologies, the Internet of things and virtualization added fuel to the fire. Miscalculations in estimating the number of hosts in the WAN and inefficient address allocation have caused the IPv4 shortage.
How did the addresses end?
Early XNUMXs APNIC director Paul Wilson that IPv4 addresses will run out in the next ten years. In general, his forecast turned out to be quite accurate.
2011 year: As Wilson predicted, the APNIC Internet registrar (responsible for the Asia-Pacific region) has the last . The organization introduced a new rule - one 1024-address block in one hand. Analysts say that without this restriction, block /8 would have ended in a month. Now only a small number of addresses remain at APNIC's disposal.
2012 year: The depletion of the pool was announced by the European Internet registrar RIPE. It also started allocating the last /8 block. The organization followed APNIC's example and introduced strict restrictions on the distribution of IPv4. In 2015, RIPE had only 16 million free addresses. Today, that number has dwindled significantly. . It should be noted that in 2012 . World telecom operators have activated the new protocol for some of their customers. Among the first were AT&T, Comcast, Free Telecom, Internode, XS4ALL, and others. At the same time, Cisco and D-Link enabled IPv6 by default in the settings of their routers.
A couple of fresh materials from our blog on Habré:
2013 year: Jeff Huston of APNIC on the blog that the US registrar ARIN will run out of IPv4 addresses in the second half of 2014. Around the same time, representatives of ARIN that they have only two /8 blocks left.
2015 year: ARIN the first registrar to run out of free IPv4 address pool. All companies in this region have lined up and are waiting for someone to release idle IPs.
2017 year: About stopping the issuance of addresses in the registrar LACNIC, responsible for the countries of Latin America. Now only those companies that have never received them before can get a block. AFRINIC - responsible for the African region - also introduced restrictions on the issuance of addresses. Their purpose is strictly evaluated, their maximum number in one hand is limited.
2019 year: Today, all registrars have a relatively small number of addresses left. Pools are kept afloat due to the fact that unused addresses are periodically returned to circulation. For example, at MIT 14 million IP addresses. More than half of them decided to resell to needy companies.
What's next
It is believed that IPv4 addresses by February 2020. After that, in front of Internet service providers, manufacturers of network equipment and other companies — migrate to IPv6 or work with .
Network Address Translation (NAT) allows you to translate multiple local addresses into one external address. The maximum number of ports is 65. Theoretically, the same number of local addresses can be mapped to one public address (if you do not take into account some limitations of individual NAT implementations).
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ISPs can turn to specialized solutions - Carrier Grade NAT. They allow you to centrally manage local and external addresses of subscribers and limit the number of TCP and UDP ports available to clients. Thus, ports between users are distributed more efficiently, plus there is protection against DDoS attacks.
Among the disadvantages of NAT, potential problems with firewalls can be identified. All user sessions go online from one white address. It turns out that only one client at a time can work with sites that provide access to services via IP. Moreover, the resource may think that it is under a DoS attack and close access to all clients.
An alternative to NAT is the transition to IPv6. These addresses will last for a long time, plus it has a number of advantages. For example, a built-in IPSec component that encrypts individual data packets.
So far, IPv6 only 14,3% of sites worldwide. Widespread adoption of the protocol is hampered by several factors related to the cost of migration, lack of backward compatibility, and technical difficulties in implementation.
We will talk about this next time.
What we write about in the VAS Experts corporate blog:
Source: habr.com