[Gllug] IPv6 allocation options

[Daniel P. Berrange]

On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 07:49:30AM +0000, Chris Bell wrote:
> Hello,
>    There have been more recent reports that IPv4 is reaching full capacity,
> with available addresses running out within weeks. IPv6 has been in
> development for a long time, and available through a few ISPs for a while,
> but when is it likely to be made generally available to all users? What are
> the most important problems still to be fixed?

The question  'when will addresses run out' is suprisingly hard, and
actually has many possible right answers, depending on your POV.

There is the date when IANA runs out of /8s  to hand out to RIRs. It is
down to the last 7 now, and when 2 more are allocated, this triggers
automatic hand out of the last 5, one to each RIR. Some statistical analysis
is predicting this will happen in a matter of weeks.

Then there is the date when RIRs will run out of blocks to hand out at
the next level. Statisical analysis is predicting this will happen 
before the end of the year for some RIRs.

Two statistically predicted dates for IANA/RIR exhaustion can be seen here:

  http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html


Then there is the date when end/ADSL-users will be unable to get an IPv4
address for their router. This is almost certainly not going to occur.
What will happen is that most large ISPs will probably end up deploying
NAT in front of their ADSL users. So their customers' ADSL routers will
get given IPv4 addrs from one of the private address ranges instead of
public range. If you are willing to pay a large enough fee you'll likely
be able to still get a dedicated public IPv4 address. So end end users
will simply see ever increasing cost for obtaining IPv4 addrs as scarcity
increases, rather than a fixed date when they run out. To quote

   http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2010-09/exhaustguide.html


   "Fully depleted" or even "run out" is perhaps not the most
    appropriate way to describe what will happen to IPv4 addresses
    in the coming months. Its probably more accurate to say
    "unobtainable at the current prices". 

The potaroo.net site has alot of other interesting articles on the
topic which are worth reading for people who are curious.

  http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/

Regards,
Daniel
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