On 2/10/2011 9:46 PM, Ricky Beam wrote:
On Thu, 10 Feb 2011 11:43:50 -0500, Matthew Kaufman <matthew@matthew.at> wrote:
There is no one universal "global routing table". They probably appear in someone's routing table, somewhere... just not yours.
Using public address space for private networking is a gross misuse of the resource. Go to any registry and ask for address space for your private networking that you do not intend to announce to the internet. They will laugh at you, and point you to RFC1918. (and likely flag you as someone to whom address space should never be assigned.) The only reason legacy holders get away with such crap is because there's no clear contract governing their assignment.
https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four35 Encourages use of RFC1918, but does not require it, especially when private peering with other networks is involved.
How many days do you think a single /8 lasts at current assignment rates?
APNIC says the last 2 /8's they were assigned (triggering the dead-man clause) would last ~6mo. With responsible use, 22 /8's would last several years. (3-5 best guess. Of course, there could be a land-rush and all of it disappear next week -- see also: responsible use)
If all 22 /8's were free to use, yes, 3-5 years. However, it violates existing RIR policies if those addresses are in use, even if not routed publicly.
First off, someone will have to do a lot more than 5 minutes of poking router-servers to see just how sparsely used ("announced") the space really is. That includes digging through BGP histories to see if it's ever been announced. Then research who should be in control of the space (announced or not.) Then send out nasty sounding letters informing whomever that X address space has not been announced to the public internet in Y years; on Z date, the space will reenter the IANA/ICANN free pool for reassignment. (cue lawyers :-)) They'd also be highly motivated to return unused space if they were being billing for it.
All of this would have to be accomplished in less than 6-9 months, but no one is going to wait in the hopes it might be accomplished, as failure would mean ruin. So the networks will deploy counter measures before the 6-9 month mark. They are already in the process.
As for this "not fixing the problem", IPv4 is going to be a problem for MANY years to come. IPv6 deployment is glacially slow. IPv4 being "out of space" is getting news attention now, but will fade from the spotlight shortly. The people who have space will continue to have it and generally not notice the lack of availablity. The likes of Facebook, etc., have jumped on IPv6 because they have a reason to... they have volumes of IPv6 connected eyeballs. Yet the likes of Amazon and Akamai, aren't supporting IPv6 (and have no published plans to.) Almost all of the major ISPs in the country still don't fully support IPv6 -- the few that do embrace v6 make it a pain in the ass to get it setup. I don't support IPv6 (since elink killed their experiment); I can get everywhere I care to go, and everyone who cares to get to me does. I, like many/most others, will fix that problem when it *is* a problem.
IPv4 will not be a problem for MANY years to come. If it survives 5 years in the DFZ, I'll be shocked. Errr, wasn't it this list that Akamai said they were testing and working on IPv6 deployments less than a week ago? Also, just because I have space (currently a /19 free), only means I have until that space runs out (assigning a /22 to a telco tomorrow morning as they just hit 98% utilization tonight, technically 100%, but I managed to free up a few). After that, IPv4 requires CGN or IPv6 with NAT64/DNS64. Neither option is pretty. Jack