Black Market May Develop For IPv4 Addresses 282
GMGruman writes "Everyone knows that we're running out of traditional IPv4 Internet addresses and that switching to IPv6 is the answer — yet foot-dragging by IT departments and vendors means the problem is still on the back burner. IPv4/IPv6 coexistence is now expected to last for 5 years. In this article, Mel Beckman explains how this is all leading to a black market in traditional IPv4 addresses that will catch many people off-guard, and boost Internet access prices sky-high."
Re:I fail to see the black market part (Score:1, Informative)
What I see will end up happening is that the V4 prices will go up, and eventually for a static IP (v4 or v6), the price will be insane ($50-$100 a month, citing how few IPs are available.) Of course, when someone mentions that IPv6 doesn't have the number exhaustion issue that V4 does, the sales person will look at you and start drooling, just like you were trying to tell a chimp about vector calculus.
So even if IPv6 becomes common, eventually expect to either be forced to a dyndns-like service or be paying big bucks for even a single static IP, be it a V4 or a V6.
with IPv6 it would be a static /64. It is hard to give out anything smaller than a /64.
Re:For Sale (Score:1, Informative)
I'm angry about numbers. Numbers make me mad.
Re:I fail to see the black market part (Score:3, Informative)
Any market that forms that people don't want to form is a black market.
No, you have effectively defined "gray market" instead: an unauthorized market in commercial goods. Now if we were to pass a law that makes possession of an IPv4 address (or /8 IPv4 address) a crime (especially a felony instead of misdemeanor), then it becomes a black market. black = crime in criminal courts. gray = unauthorized breech of contract in civil courts.
Re:Public IPs at premium prices (Score:5, Informative)
It is just that it will be like that _Star Trek NG_ episode where, upon hearing something munching on the Enterprise's hull, Dr. Crusher asks the ship's computer "What is the nature of the universe?" to which the answer comes back "The universe is an oblate spheroid one kilometer in diameter."
Dude, there was nothing munching on the hull, people were disappearing because she had dropped into a collapsing warp bubble of her own private universe!
CRUSHER: Computer, what's happening?
COMPUTER: Explosive decompression decks five through fourteen. Sealing off forward sections.
CRUSHER: Cause?
COMPUTER: A flaw in the ship's design.
CRUSHER: Show me. Analysis.
COMPUTER: No ship's structures exist forward of bulkhead three four two.
God!
Re:Public IPs at premium prices (Score:4, Informative)
> my provider uses 10.* addresses there therefore I had to change the
> addressing scheme on my LAN because
Why did you chose 10.x.x.x for your LAN in the first place ? I doubt that you are planning to connect 16,777,216 machines to your LAN ;-)
Guide lines are to use:
192.168.X.X if you need 65,536 IP addresses or less
172.16.X.X-172.31.X.X if you need between 65,536 and 1,048,576 IP addresses
10.X.X.X if you need between 1,048,576 and 16,777,216 IP addresses
Routing is slightly faster with more bits in your netmask. Although I do not think that you will notice a difference especially nowadays. I think this was one of the reasons for these guidelines. Following the guide lines also ease connectivity to bigger nated networks, your provider in your case.
Re:Public IPs at premium prices (Score:5, Informative)
Re:He really didn't understand (Score:2, Informative)
When I spoke with Mr. Beckman, he was not clear on how the Internet numbering system works and, while he was was close in this article, he still does not appear to quite get it.
Kev, Thanks for participating in the article. In our interview it was never my intention to try and convey to you my depth of knowledge, but rather to elicit from you a clear explanation of your NANOG paper. Which I did, thank you very much! I assure you, however, that I'm reasonably competent at IP addressing concepts, since I run BGP myself and also deploy BGP and IPv6 implementations for enterprises. And I teach IPv6 courses around the world (I was in Toronto doing ao last week, which is why I had a deadline crunch on your interview).