Whatever happened to NAT? Jeff On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Jeff S Wheeler <jsw@inconcepts.biz> wrote:
Dear list,
Since IPv4 exhaustion is an increasingly serious and timely topic lately, I would like to point out something that interests me, and maybe everyone else who will be spending a lot on Tylenol and booze when we really do run out of v4 IPs.
I have trouble understanding why an ARIN record for a network regularly receiving new, out-sized IPv4 allocations on the order of millions of addresses at once would publish a remark like the one below, indicating that Verizon Wireless has about 2 million IPs allocated.
OrgName: Cellco Partnership DBA Verizon Wireless CIDR: 97.128.0.0/9 Comment: Verizon Wireless currently has 44.3 Million Comment: subscribers with 2.097 Million IP addresses allocated. RegDate: 2008-04-14
This may be unscientific and full of error, but if you add up all the IPs behind AS6167, you get a pretty big number, about 27 million. If I make more dangerous assumptions, I might argue that a network with a need for 2 million IPs, at the time this /9 was handed out, already had about 19 million. Then it received 8 million more.
Sure, smart phones are becoming more popular. It's reasonable to assume that virtually all cell phones will eventually have an IP address almost all the time. But that isn't the case right now, and the ARIN is in the business of supplying its members with six months worth of addresses. If everyone is expected to run out and buy a new phone and start using "the Google" right away, and stay on it all the time, maybe cellular operators really need a lot more IP addresses. If not, why does Verizon Wireless have 27 million IPs when the above comment indicates they need only a tenth of that?
- j
-- Jeffrey Lyon, Leadership Team jeffrey.lyon@blacklotus.net | http://www.blacklotus.net Black Lotus Communications of The IRC Company, Inc. Look for us at HostingCon 2009 in Washington, DC on August 10th - 12th at Booth #401.