# IPV4 Became History About 11:30PM ET Today



## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

The last available IPV4 internet addresses were issued today.

From this point forward, IPV6 will be issued for all new addressing needs. The IPV6 protocol is much more complex then the old XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX and is expected to last at least for the foreseeable future.

New internet Gateway servers will provide the interface between the incompatible networks which will have to run in parallel with each other.

Expect to see a lot of information about these changes soon.


----------



## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Well, it's been a long time coming. Not that IPv4 will go away, as it still makes sense for LAN usage.


----------



## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

IPv4 isn't going away, it's going to coexist. Also, they're not just handing over IPv6 blocks today...we've had ours since the summer at least.


----------



## koji68 (Jun 21, 2004)

LarryFlowers said:


> The last available IPV4 internet addresses were issued today.
> 
> From this point forward, IPV6 will be issued for all new addressing needs. The IPV6 protocol is much more complex then the old XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX and is expected to last at least for the foreseeable future.
> 
> ...


Foreseeable future indeed.

http://www.edn.com/blog/Leibson_s_L...Addresses_Can_Dance_on_the_Head_of_a_Pin_.php


----------



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

And I think it's important to point out, they ran out at a very high level. ICANN/IANA issued the final v4's to the regional registrys, like ARIN. They trickle down from there, so there are still v4 addresses unused. They won't run out at that level until later this year.


----------



## Marlin Guy (Apr 8, 2009)

koji68 said:


> Foreseeable future indeed.
> 
> http://www.edn.com/blog/Leibson_s_L...Addresses_Can_Dance_on_the_Head_of_a_Pin_.php


"So we could assign an IPV6 address to EVERY ATOM ON THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths. It isn't remotely likely that we'll run out of IPV6 addresses at any time in the future"

WOW!


----------



## LarryFlowers (Sep 22, 2006)

dpeters11 said:


> And I think it's important to point out, they ran out at a very high level. ICANN/IANA issued the final v4's to the regional registrys, like ARIN. They trickle down from there, so there are still v4 addresses unused. They won't run out at that level until later this year.


I also suspect there will be an effort made to recover addresses that have been abandoned and are unused.. there are plenty out there... but still the change to IPV6 is a good one and hopefully this will provide the necessary push to get the ISP's to finalize their efforts. Most have tests running in various cities.


----------



## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

LarryFlowers said:


> I also suspect there will be an effort made to recover addresses that have been abandoned and are unused.. there are plenty out there... but still the change to IPV6 is a good one and hopefully this will provide the necessary push to get the ISP's to finalize their efforts. Most have tests running in various cities.


it would be nice to see consumer IPV6/IPV4 translation devices on the market.


----------



## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

It will be interesting to see how the IPs trickle back to the consumer.

The most important translation is for servers on the Internet to still be able to tell one user from another accessing their services. ISPs creating their own virtual networks and presenting themselves as one v4 IP have caused a problem with this for years. An ISP creating its own IPv4 network with a gateway to the IPv6 world could still identify a single user via a translated IPv6.

But going the other way ... where DBSTalk is always presented as 72.9.159.119 to the IPv4 user? It sounds messy. IPv6 to the home would be better. How many years off is that?


----------



## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

> *IPV4 Became History About 11:30PM ET Today*


That s/b 11:30AM.


----------



## scooper (Apr 22, 2002)

James Long said:


> It will be interesting to see how the IPs trickle back to the consumer.
> 
> The most important translation is for servers on the Internet to still be able to tell one user from another accessing their services. ISPs creating their own virtual networks and presenting themselves as one v4 IP have caused a problem with this for years. An ISP creating its own IPv4 network with a gateway to the IPv6 world could still identify a single user via a translated IPv6.
> 
> But going the other way ... where DBSTalk is always presented as 72.9.159.119 to the IPv4 user? It sounds messy. IPv6 to the home would be better. How many years off is that?


One thing that could be relatively easy to implement at first would be to set the IPV4 addresses within the IPV6 ones - then all you would need to do is strip out all the unnecessary bits. This would work for an ISP level fix, quite possibly for most home appliances.


----------



## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

scooper said:


> One thing that could be relatively easy to implement at first would be to set the IPV4 addresses within the IPV6 ones - then all you would need to do is strip out all the unnecessary bits. This would work for an ISP level fix, quite possibly for most home appliances.


Yeah... basically a dirty fix would be to assign a prefix (or a suffix) to existing IPV4 addresses so that the new IPV6 system would always assume that prefix or suffix to be there even if not explicitly coded (kind of like how you can make a local call within your area code without explicitly having to dial it).

Old IPV4-only equipment would need to be upgraded if firmware/software couldn't translate to contact new IPV6 addresses... but the new system could easily recognize any existing old IPV4 connections.

It can probably be fairly seamless for most folk.


----------



## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

A v4 address can be written as 0:0:0:0:ffff:72.9.159.119, or with the simplification rule, as ::ffff:72.9.159.119.


----------



## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

dpeters11 said:


> A v4 address can be written as 0:0:0:0:ffff:72.9.159.119, or with the simplification rule, as ::ffff:72.9.159.119.


http://knowledgelayer.softlayer.com/questions/459/IPv6+overview for those who don't know about IPv6 simplification.


----------



## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

scooper said:


> One thing that could be relatively easy to implement at first would be to set the IPV4 addresses within the IPV6 ones - then all you would need to do is strip out all the unnecessary bits. This would work for an ISP level fix, quite possibly for most home appliances.


Comcast is testing three options:

1. tunneling 4-to-6 via 6RD

2. tunneling 4-to-6 via Dual Stack Lite

3. True IPv6 via Dual Stack, where your router is IPv6 compatible and handles everything and gets assigned both a v4 and v6 address.

This also doesn't actually affect anything in your internal home network. You're still on 192.168, or 10.0 or whatever unroutable network you've chosen.


----------



## dorfd1 (Jul 16, 2008)

the wrt54gl supports ipv6 and different tunnel types. if alternative firmware is used


----------



## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

RasputinAXP said:


> This also doesn't actually affect anything in your internal home network. You're still on 192.168, or 10.0 or whatever unroutable network you've chosen.


What happens when the first website or other server system people expect to visit is given a IPv6 address and no compatible IPv4 address? DNS returns an IPv6 IP and IPv4 equipment has no clue how to route to it? Or will DNS be intercepted by the ISP and a temporary translated IP be provided?

Right now IPv4 computers know how to shout to each other within a subnet and to direct all other traffic to a specific gateway IP. More complicated routing can also be set up but the basic subnet vs everything else is there. Let the gateway machine figure out what to do with the non-subnet traffic. (Generally following the same rule ... if it is on the WAN subnet go direct, if it isn't use the next gateway.) And even though NAT can be used at many levels, the targeted IP on the Internet remains the same.

My computer knows that I'm currently visiting 72.9.159.119 ... and even though it's IP is 192.168.1.6, it knows the public destination. 72.9.159.119 isn't on my subnet so it sends all packets to the gateway (192.168.1.1) which sees that 72.9.159.119 isn't on it's subnet so it sends to the ISP gateway and so forth until 72.9.159.119 is reached. Whether 72.9.159.119 is a single machine or a gateway with several machines providing services is a mystery - but my source computer knows that destination.

But when that destination is a new IPv6 only address? Someone is going to have to proxy. And they are going to have to do it transparently.

As one article on this issue stated, now the fun begins.


----------



## RasputinAXP (Jan 23, 2008)

James Long said:


> What happens when the first website or other server system people expect to visit is given a IPv6 address and no compatible IPv4 address? DNS returns an IPv6 IP and IPv4 equipment has no clue how to route to it? Or will DNS be intercepted by the ISP and a temporary translated IP be provided?
> 
> Right now IPv4 computers know how to shout to each other within a subnet and to direct all other traffic to a specific gateway IP. More complicated routing can also be set up but the basic subnet vs everything else is there. Let the gateway machine figure out what to do with the non-subnet traffic. (Generally following the same rule ... if it is on the WAN subnet go direct, if it isn't use the next gateway.) And even though NAT can be used at many levels, the targeted IP on the Internet remains the same.
> 
> ...


Well, it's translation, not proxying. There will have to be some sort of NAT, and generally that's going to be handled at the gateway level or at your modem's level. The target IPv6 address doesn't even have to know that you're a v4 client, because it's going to target the return packet at the external address from your modem or router. Any non-IPv6-aware devices behind your modem or router aren't going to care because they're going to get served the translated IPv4 address. That's why Comcast's trying to figure it out with three different trials.

Besides, it's not like IPv4 is going to go AWAY, it's just going to start slowly receding into the background.


----------

