Drumming Up More Internet Addresses

[ethan.boston-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Ethan Schwartz)]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 5:10 PM, Jack Coats <jack-rp9/bkPP+cDYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> It would help if some folks like AT&T, MIT, etc (if they already
> haven't) would give back their class A so it could be parceled out to
> the 'common folks'.
>

Unless they can "defrag" their assignments first probably will add some
complexity to IPv4 routing which relies somewhat I knowing where these
blocks are... but it may be a good stop gap measure.  Good luck getting
these organizations to give it up... I suppose in that regard IPv4 has
become similar to radio frequency spectrum addressing... maybe the
government can auction off blocks of them for billions?  I know right now
the ISPs which serve smaller organizations are quite happy to charge tens of
dollars per month for a single static IP, and Verizon will force you into
higher speed tiers further increasing costs.



> I am guessing the ISPs are going to take back their DHCP routable
> addresses and put many of us on 10.x.x.x or direct on IPV6 unless you
> want to pay for a routable (and probably static) IP.
>
>
If you're suggesting a lot of people end up behind a giant NAT, each given a
private IPv4 address with a single public facing IPv4 address then that can
get very sticky... the average user getting email, browsing the web, etc,
may not care (or know) that they are behind a giant NAT... But when you
consider how these users are seen from the outside it gets harder to
swallow... how do you block of identify users doing bad things w/o heavy
cooperation from an ISP?   Yes, ISP help is already required to some degree,
but now it's even harder as you may have hundreds or thousands of potential
users all tied to the identifying piece of information you have.  Unless
maybe I don't understand how this works, which is very possible :)



> In IPV6, I think it is the 00ffxxyyxxyy ip addresses (hex here) is
> really a gateway to the IPV4 address space where the xxyyxxyy is the
> hex version of the IPV4 addresses. So all IPV4 folks are not out of
> the water just yet. .... Just a fun fact I heard at a non-BLU LUG
> group.
>
>
I would that that's great if you are an IPv6 client trying to reach an IPv4
destination, but it would not solve the problem of trying to reach an IPv6
destination from an older host.