[NNagain] ip address exhaustion podcast

Dave Taht dave.taht at gmail.com
Mon Feb 19 08:08:14 EST 2024


With as much humor and nuance as possible, I attempted to address some
of the backstory behind the 240/4 brouhaha in terms of why making sure
the internet had enough addresses for everyone was important.

https://hackaday.com/2024/02/14/floss-weekly-episode-769-10-more-internet/

(there are links to it on hackernews and elsewhere)

I have been deeply worried that in general, many recipients of BEAD
funding are intending to crutch along on IPv4 CGNAT and not put in
IPv6. The knowledge level with most that I have talked with is that
you just plug in a fiber and everything works, right? We just need to
run fiber - when the reality of the DSL deployment among others has a
lot of IPv4 addresses that need to move over, and that an internet
without direct connectivity is a poorer internet for everyone.

There are other nuances that I discuss, like the US government holding
onto 11 seemingly unused IPv4/8s, numerous other corporations also
holding onto a /8 of this asset, like Ford, and not using it (a /8 is
16 million IPv4 addresses at PDV of $30/ip), the role of the RIRs
moving forward, and the spectre of Amazon raising $1B/year from
renting the allocations they own to their customers. (The 240/4 "for
future use" problem is a relative distraction, honestly! but amazon's
use of it *all* does irk me, as I had intended that space be used for
all of humanity). Certainly by finally charging for their IPV4
addresses we will see some movement again towards IPv6, but that
gets me back into hoping that IPv6 IS deployed as part of BEAD to the
edges where it is most needed, and enough IPv4 remains available to
connect it also, without overloading CGNATs.

I would really like ip address exhaustion to be discussed at higher
levels in the government, not just as a network neutrality issue
(CGNATs make p2p vpns and gaming more difficult, among other things).
How could that be accomplished?


-- 
40 years of net history, a couple songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9RGX6QFm5E
Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos


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