Subject: Re[4]: national security

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 20:06:26 +0100

[email-masked] writes:

> Exactly.  And the *reason* why IPv6 has 128 bit addresses is because
> the designers realized that such losses happen, and ruled out 64-bit
> addresses because of that effect.

Since those losses are not significantly diminished by doubling the
address length, why bother?

The problem arises when zones of the address are reserved.  Setting
aside n bits of an m-bit address diminishes the address space by 2^n,
not by (m-n)/m.

> I suggest you figure out just how much bigger 2^65 is than the
> current 2^32 ...

33 bits

You're making the same mistake as everyone else:  You calculate the size
of the address space as 2^n, but you believe that reserving m bits
diminishes the address space by only m.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 15:15:04 -0500

> 33 bits

8,589,934,592 times as many addresses.  At current burn rates, it will take
us some 20 years to go through the *current* free IPv4 space.  And nobody's
proposed any killer app that will take millions of times more address
space.

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From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 22:17:41 +0000

> proposed any killer app that will take millions of times more address

The "at current burn rate" assumption is far from safe though...

Tim

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From: shogunx <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 18:40:50 -0500 (EST)

> The "at current burn rate" assumption is far from safe though...

As is the concept of IP address space as a commodity item.

> Tim

sleekfreak pirate broadcast
world tour 2002-3
live from the pirate hideout
http://sleekfreak.ath.cx:81/

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 22:17:46 -0500

> The "at current burn rate" assumption is far from safe though...

Oh? Have any better-than-handwaving reasons to suspect the current allocation
rate will change drastically?  I don't forsee the cellphone or embedded
markets taking much IPv4 address space - both of those areas are already
pointing to IPv6.  Much of the world isn't online yet, but quite frankly,
those areas have severe infrastructure and economic problems to resolve
before they start chewing up a lot of address space (yes, China and India
have enough warm bodies to burn out the address space - they don't have the
monetary units to do so).

I'm more than happy to accept any realistic projections that point to
a change in the burn rate - if you know of something I've overlooked,
please enlighten us....

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From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 11:57:30 +0100

> Oh? Have any better-than-handwaving reasons to suspect the current 
> allocation rate will change drastically?

I have a slightly better than handwaving indication that the current 
statistics don't show the full picture. In the past 4 years we've seen 
large scale always-on internet access deployment. However, this doesn't 
show up in the address space usage statistics. So addresses must be 
coming from other places than just the IANA storage rooms.

> Much of the world isn't online yet, but quite frankly,

It seems there are (or were) 450 million bicycles in China. Think about 
it: what's cheaper to mass produce, a 20 kilo steel bicycle with lots 
of intricate mechanics, or a simple 1 kilo plastic sub-laptop?

> a change in the burn rate - if you know of something I've overlooked,

I believe there are many factors that aren't accounted for in the 
current projections. For instance, some ISPs use non-RIR space they've 
held for a long time to give to customers. (See 12.0.0.0/8.) Another 
factor is that when people change ISPs, they have to renumber. Since 
the policies, and especially the way they are applied, have grown 
progressively more strict the past ten years or so, this often means 
the organization in question gets fewer addresses from the new ISP than 
they used to have at their old ISP. There is more, but let me finish by 
observing that it's not much fun anymore to announce a /16 let alone a 
/8 over BGP due to all the worm scanning that's going on these days.

The current IPv4 address consumption statistics are like measuring a 
pile of books stacked on a big pillow. The stack doesn't seem to grow 
that fast, until all the air is out of the pillow and it doesn't 
compress any further. Then the pile starts growing higher much faster.

So while I completely agree there is no reason to worry about IPv4 
address depletion the next five years or so, I wouldn't count on 
significant numbers of IPv4 addresses being available in 10 or 20 
years.

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From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 12:29:04 +0100

Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:

> large scale always-on internet access deployment. However, this 
> doesn't show up in the address space usage statistics. So addresses 
> must be coming from other places than just the IANA storage rooms.
>
have "an always on" - address is  192.169.0.102

/Loa

-- 

Loa Andersson

mobile +46 739 81 21 64

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From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 14:03:05 +0100

> of intricate mechanics, or a simple 1 kilo plastic sub-laptop?

The bicycle, by far.  The mechanics are not intricate, the number of
parts is low, the tolerances are generous, the fabrication technologies
are simple.  Any type of computer is far more difficult to produce.

> significant numbers of IPv4 addresses being available in 10 or 20 

Much of the Internet will still be on IPv4 10-20 years from now, I
suspect, so some hard problems of address allocation are likely to
arise.