UPDATED 15:23 EDT / SEPTEMBER 09 2014

The Internet has been running on life support for 15 years | #Peer2

drip IV life support hospital medicine ill sickThe American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) realized that it was running out of IPv4 address space at least 20 years ago, but the biggest concerns lie in the unknown aspects of transitioning away from this protocol. About 15 years ago, the organization developed a life support mechanism called the Network Address Translation to help limp IPv4 along at the time, but that life support engine could go bust on any day now.

The Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) has been out of IPv4 address space for about two years. Europe has been out for a little over a year. The Latin America region is extremely close to running out. In an interview for theCUBE at Peer 2.0 in August, IPv6 Evangelist and Director of Professional Services at Hurricane Electric Owen DeLong, predicted that ARIN may be close to running out, if not out, somewhere between the end of this year to early next year. ARIN CIO Richard Jimmerson mentioned in a separate interview that IPv4 address space is one big organization away from depletion.

When the IPv4 depletion does happen, DeLong believes that not much is going to change when you wake up the day after. As time progresses, people will lose the ability to add more services, like mobile devices, to the Internet because there won’t be any addresses to place them on. Some of those things are going to get forced into only IPv6.

The fear, however, lies in the unknown. “The question is… how long before the things that don’t support v6 are no longer talking to enough of the Internet that things get bad,” said DeLong. No one knows when the depletion is going to happen, how it’s going to happen or what the impact is going to be. To make the transition easier and the process less painful, IPv6 needs to be more widely deployed before we get to the point of complete IPv4 depletion.

See DeLong’s entire commentary below.

photo credit: sparrowsfall via photopin cc


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