The internet \u2013 particularly the North American part of the internet \u2013 is out of the most important building block required for its foundation\u2026.the IP address.\u00a0 The internet is supposed to be this infinitely expandable utopia where everyone can build whatever interconnections they want and we can just keep expanding forever without any central bottleneck or resource depletion, but limited availability of IPv4 space has really popped that balloon.
\nThe original IPv4 pool of addresses contains approximately 4.3 billion addresses.\u00a0 On February 3, 2011 the last \/8 address blocks were allocated to the Regional Internet Registries (also known as RIRs, these groups include ARIN, APNIC, RIPENIC, etc. and are the bodies that actually allocate IP addresses to end user networks within their geographic region) to allocate to their end users.\u00a0 With that allocation, IPv4 addresses were officially exhausted.
\nThe question remains \u2013 why are we here? How could 4.3 billion addresses run out so quickly?\u00a0 How could this problem of exhaustion not gain any visibility until it was too late?\u00a0 Why weren\u2019t there more alarm bells?\u00a0 What do we do now? For all of these questions there are two sets of answers.\u00a0 The first set comes from the RIRs and ARIN (the American Registry of Internet Numbers) in particular.\u00a0 These answers are the byproduct of ARINs amazingly complex bureaucracy and its policy makers who are more interested in deflection and nursing that bureaucracy than building a functional organization.\u00a0 The second set of answers is the truth as seen by the experts here at Accuro.
\nThe \u201cofficial\u201d reasons for IPv4 Depletion
\nFailure of the market to adopt widespread use of Network Address Translation (NAT) for server-side applications.
\nAdvent of multiple devices per Internet user.
\nInefficient use of allocations by end users
\nIncreased demand by the end users of other RIRs (particularly users in China, Brazil, and India.
\nHigh density data centers requiring more than one address per machine (i.e. cloud computing and virtualization).
\nBefore we get on to our answers, we\u2019ll take on each of these \u201cofficial\u201d reasons briefly.\u00a0 The reader will notice that each of the \u201cofficial\u201d reasons for IPv4 exhaustion has a grain of truth in it, but does not excuse our current situation.\u00a0 Similarly a farmer who planted corn in the Sahara desert with borrowed money would not be excused by his creditors after his crop failed if he simply stated the obvious\u2026.\u201dIt didn\u2019t rain enough.\u201d\u00a0 The farmer remains at fault for making bad choices from the start.
\nNAT in the datacenter environment has, and always will be, a pipe dream.\u00a0 If you owned a company that sold TVs, you could very easily publish several official documents advising your clients to smash their TVs before going to bed every night, however, it would have to be some really compelling writing to entice your customers to waste that much money based on a white paper.\u00a0 Server side NAT finds itself in the same predicament.\u00a0 It certainly would help ARIN and all the RIRs to a great extend, however, no rationale datacenter operator, host, or corporate user is going to give up the freedom required to implement it just be a good corporate citizen.\u00a0 Using the failure of the market to adopt a hideously ineffective conservation measure as an excuse for the shortage IP space is not viable.
\nThe other reasons are equally as weak.\u00a0 Anyone with a pulse in the late 90\u2019s new that every tech company wanted to sell the average consumer as many internet gadgets as possible.\u00a0 It was only a matter of time before the technologies caught up with demand.\u00a0\u00a0 Similarly, anyone with a pulse in the late 90\u2019s should have known that India, China, and Brazil were rapidly modernizing and where going to need a lot of infrastructure in the coming decades.\u00a0 ARIN and the other RIRs approved every single allocation, so there is no blame to be laid upon end users.\u00a0 Very few have broken the rules.
\nSo what are the real reasons?
\nIf you\u2019ve read this far, you probably have a pretty good idea of what comes next.\u00a0 The real reason for IPv4 depletion rests solely on the shoulders of the RIRs and their practices.\u00a0 The RIRs management of the IPv4 pool has been the greatest \u2013 and most lasting \u2013 failure of any internet related resource.\u00a0 This is not to say those poor souls working at the RIRs \u2013 and carrying out the allocation policies \u2013 are incompetent.\u00a0\u00a0 Instead, we are saying that the legacy the RIRs inherited was doomed to fail the marketplace and, furthermore, the system for allocating IPv4 addresses was fatally flawed.
\nPrior to the creation of the RIRs, large allocations (normally a \/8 or an incredible 1\/256th of the entire internet) were handed out much like candy to children, primarily to companies and universities involved with the creation of the internet.\u00a0 Did MIT expect to one day have 1\/256th of 4.3 billion computers on its campus?\u00a0 Why did these organizations accept and why do they refuse to give back these allocations that have crippled the rest of the internet?\u00a0 The answer is simple \u2013 there\u2019s no incentive to take exactly what you need and there\u2019s no incentive to give back any extra space in your inventory.\u00a0 If anything, there\u2019s a disincentive to do so as it may cripple your unexpected growth in the future.
\nLet\u2019s say a new uninhabited island the size of Texas was discovered just off the coast of the mainland US and the US government decided to give away all the land to current citizens.\u00a0 Let\u2019s also say the method for giving away that land was to have a citizen submit paperwork showing, without any real verification, how much land they\u2019ve used historically and how much they plan to use in the future.\u00a0 How many people are going to say, \u201cNo No!\u00a0 I only need 50 acres.\u201d?\u00a0 Very few.\u00a0 The vast majority are not only going to get all they can get but they are going to try to hang on to all that land \u2013 even land they aren\u2019t using.\u00a0 There\u2019s no incentive to ask for more and there\u2019s no incentive to give back unused land.
\nOnce the RIRs were created, the same land-grab system was maintained.\u00a0 A provider asked for a certain amount of space and, with minimal verification, these requests were granted if the provider met fairly simple steps outlined by each RIR.\u00a0 This system encourages providers to ask for \u2013 and keep \u2013 as much space as is even remotely plausible.\u00a0 The result is huge amounts of space sitting idle in the virtual \u201cIP Bank Accounts\u201d of end users worldwide.
\nThe solution is simple
\nIndeed it is.\u00a0 Monetizing IP space is the only way to maintain the IPv4 pool until IPv6 is a reality.\u00a0 IPv4 doesn\u2019t make something that is finite suddenly become infinite but it does buy the internet some time.\u00a0 This isn\u2019t an academic argument anymore.\u00a0\u00a0 A solution must be found to keep our internet functioning and to keep all the end users connected to the internet growing.
\nCheck back for upcoming blog posts.\u00a0 In our next post, we\u2019ll explore the mechanics, plusses, and minuses of monetizing IPv4 further.\u00a0 Also look for upcoming posts on the reality of IPv6 and other exciting subjects.
\nYour feedback, questions, and topic ideas are always welcome.\u00a0 Please email us at blog [at] ipaddressbroker [dot] net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The internet \u2013 particularly the North American part of the internet \u2013 is out of the most important building block required for its foundation\u2026.the IP address.\u00a0 The internet is supposed to be this infinitely expandable utopia where everyone can build…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accuro-consulting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t