This week, Jonathan Bennett and Doc Searls talk with David Taht about the state of the Internet and, specifically, IPv4 exhaustion. We’re running out of IPv4 addresses! But we’ve been running out for something like ten years now. What gives? And why are nearly 20% of the world’s IPv4 addresses sitting unused? David has a hack that would give the world 10% more Internet, but Amazon might have something to say about it.
There’s even more, like Kessler Syndrome, some musing on what the Interplanetary Internet will look like, the worth of real paper books, and a long-term bet for some IPv4 addresses to come to fruition in 2038.
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right in the Hackaday Discord? Next week, we’re interviewing Shawn Dunn about MicroOS and OpenSUSE Kalpa.
Direct Download in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along, here’s the transcript for this week’s episode.
Thought the military was holding onto a lot of IP4 addresses?
They are but it doesnt matter. Carriers are using CGNAT to reuse IPv4 address space and can use all the IPv6 they want easily. Doesnt matter what v4 space you use because it all get buried behind NATs.
For historical reference, when the military turned over control of addressing, address space was classful so multiple class A spaces were reserved by the US military and the remaining address space turned over to civilian control. That space could probably be recycled but it would only delay the move to IPv6 which is the ultimate goal of the Internet addressing authorities for years. Their policy is basically if you want an IPv6 allocation they will give you a huge address space sufficient to service all your future needs. It was simply becoming too costly and labor intensive to keep fighting over scarce v4 space. Basically “ here is all the v6 space you will ever need, now go away forever”.
ICAN used to give them out like candy. I worked for a startup and we asked for some, this must have been back in the late 80’s or early 90’s and they were like what do you want? Got 4 full class C’s. 3 for each office and one for our colo. We wound up using perhaps 20 of them. They were actually in my name, when the company got bought out they did not use them, they had their own. They may still be out there in my name.
The problem with IPv6 is that it is hard to block certain parties.
Else we could easily go total IPv6 and there would be less need for IP4
A nit: the title of this episode should be Episode 770 … instead of the 669 in the HaD header above.
Fixed!
The off-by-one error strikes again!