Net Adresses In Short Supply

[n2doc]

Posted on: Saturday, 22 January 2011, 06:50 CST

Vint Cerf, one of the founding fathers of the web, said that the world will soon run out of Internet addresses, blaming himself for the coming shortfall of the some 4.3 billion addresses, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Friday.

“I thought it was an experiment and I thought that 4.3 billion would be enough to do an experiment,” Cerf, who is Google’s vice president and “Chief Internet Evangelist,” was quoted as saying in an interview with the Australian news source.

“Who the hell knew how much address space we needed?” he asked.

In 1977, Cerf created the web protocol IPv4, which connects computers globally, as part of an experiment while working with the US Department of Defense. He said he never thought the experiment would turn into what it is today.

“It doesn’t mean the network stops, it just means you can’t build it very well,” he said.

more

http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1983420/net_adresses_in_short_supply/index.html

[htuttle]

1. It's past time for corporate Class A holders to give up their blocks

Companies like Ford, Eli Lily, Prudential Insurance, etc... all have over 16 million public IP addresses each allocated to them for historical reasons (during that 'experiment' that Cerf mentions above). None of those companies have more than a few hundred public addresses accessible from outside, so there is no reason for them to hold that many public IP addresses.

There's actually a decent wiki article on the issue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks

[Orsino]

2. They've been saying that for a decade or two...

...but it is clear that we're edging closer to running out.

[Riftaxe]

3. The Sky is falling! the Sky is falling....

Makes you wonder when they will stop re-writing this much debunked tripe. Ah well, if anyone (clearly the article's plagairising author doesn't) cares, they can look up and IPV6.

[txlibdem]

4. IPv6 resolves all the address problems

No disaster, no internet meltdown. All we have to do is hasten the switch to IPv6, which is already in the works.

A larger issue is the speed bottleneck that the ISPs want to continue. In addition to switching to IPv6, we need to switch to Internet 2 which is several times faster and more secure.

Verizon is the main culprit in attempting to fight net neutrality rules, which would make it illegal for them to continue their practice of slowing down traffic to and from sites that do not pay them a fee. Shades of mafia "protection money" anyone?