Running out of internet addresses

The internet has officially ran out of addresses; IP addresses as you might know them as. IPv4 addresses have run out of options. Think of it like land; it's all been colonized. All we do now is break it up into smaller and smaller bits. In coming years, it'll start to affect us normal people; for now it's only companies that provide it. But, when it does hit us, it could induce a lag upon the entire internet. And the only way out is upgrading to IPv6, which really means every computer in the world needs an update, which will get expensive. And you know big-wig companies will procrastinate as long as possible. And even if you do have IPv6, other computers and servers that host this have to have it.

Thoughts? Opinions?

And on a side note, this could potentially happen with maple, but with IDs it assigns to everything in the game.

I still fail to see the importance of this in any way.

I still fail to see the importance of this in any way.

It's the same idea of exploring the west; everything has been found. Land has to be divided up even more, and prices may rise. There is really only one solution, upgrading to IPv6. 0.25% of the internet supports this, which makes it useless until every computer system in the world supports it. There's also something called network address translation (NAT), which lets different computers use one IP address.

But short story short; the internet is getting more complex. That means raising prices, and it could get a lot more bogged down in the next few years.

Most 3-4 year old computers have IPv4 and IPv6. The change wouldn't be all that drastic.

Your computer might support IPv6, but most of your software doesn't. pomegranate's getting real.

And on a side note, this could potentially happen with maple, but with IDs it assigns to everything in the game.

With up to 4 billion available VNUMs and a fairly easy extension to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 available that's not particularly likely in anyones lifetime, let alone the lifetime of the game itself.

I'm looking forward to the upgrade to IPv6, personally. I know quite a bit about IPv4 after studying 2 years with routers&switches, etc etc etc. I really want to try working with more complicated IP addresses, and IPv6 will surely provide a challenge. Not sure on whether we really are running out of IPv4 addresses or not, but it's going to happen eventually. I think my professor said that in about 10 years or so (I think), they'll have IPv6 for sure. This was back in 2008 though, so yeah.

Not looking forward to doing conversions all the time, but like I said again, it will be fun to learn and try.

Can someone explain please how this IPv6 is better than IPv4 in laymans terms? Is it simply just more numbers available for use for website addresses to use?

Not sure on whether we really are running out of IPv4 addresses or not, but it's going to happen eventually.

There's nothing to be uncertain of -

They assigned the last two blocks earlier this week to APNIC, hit their emergency last-distribution threshold and automatically distributed the five final /8s to the regional Internet registries per their pre-existing policy for exhaustion.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/01/...-Allocated

They streamed a live announcement earlier discussing it.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/03/...nouncement

Can someone explain please how this IPv6 is better than IPv4 in laymans terms? Is it simply just more numbers available for use for website addresses to use?

For the average user you don't give a damn except it means you're going to actually continue to have IP addresses available for the forseeable future a lot of software is likely to break without additional translation layers and your pretty little IP address you're used to is going to suddenly be in a freaky hexidecimal notation ( bye bye 127.0.0.1, hello 3ffe:1900:4545:3:200:f8ff:fe21:67cf )

There's nothing to be uncertain of -

They assigned the last two blocks earlier this week to APNIC, hit their emergency last-distribution threshold and automatically distributed the five final /8s to the regional Internet registries per their pre-existing policy for exhaustion.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/01/...-Allocated

They streamed a live announcement earlier discussing it.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/03/...nouncement

Thanks for the links, I'm going to have to read and watch it some time soon. I actually wasn't aware of this.

There's nothing to be uncertain of -

They assigned the last two blocks earlier this week to APNIC, hit their emergency last-distribution threshold and automatically distributed the five final /8s to the regional Internet registries per their pre-existing policy for exhaustion.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/01/...-Allocated

They streamed a live announcement earlier discussing it.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/02/03/...nouncement



For the average user you don't give a damn except it means you're going to actually continue to have IP addresses available for the forseeable future.

I understand I won't have to worry about jack-crap, but the first part of your post kinda gives me some sorta vague idea about the whole thing, so thank you for that.

But how does IPv6 work? More numbers? No more static IP addresses?

But how does IPv6 work? More numbers? No more static IP addresses?

Its just converting IP addresses from 32 bit to 128 bit. Plus some changes the the headers/routing functionality, but for exhaustion purposes it's just going from an int to a long double. ( 4b available IPs to 2^128 available IPs)

But how does IPv6 work? More numbers? No more static IP addresses?

Current IPv4 involves:

xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

255.255.255.255 (example, not a real address)

IPv6 involves hex, iirc. Example:

2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334.

Its just converting IP addresses from 32 bit to 128 bit.

and this

Oh, pretty nice. Thanks you two.

I was under the impression that the only people that -really- have to worry about this are the root levels, the ISPs, and the businesses/corporations that rent out external IPs. For a normal end-user, it's not really going to be that big of a deal, is it? Perhaps I am wrong, but from everything I have heard about IPv6, that is what I am seeing as the trend.

IPv6 involves hex, iirc. Example:

2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334.

Which reminds me that we have this cool new notation which means you can shorten it down to 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334.

I was under the impression that the only people that -really- have to worry about this are the root levels, the ISPs, and the businesses/corporations that rent out external IPs. For a normal end-user, it's not really going to be that big of a deal, is it? Perhaps I am wrong, but from everything I have heard about IPv6, that is what I am seeing as the trend.

Not an issue for the end-users. Mostly developers will have some issues.

Which reminds me that we have this cool new notation which means you can shorten it down to 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334.

And thank god it exists, otherwise, looking at 0's would get annoying real fast.

I was under the impression that the only people that -really- have to worry about this are the root levels, the ISPs, and the businesses/corporations that rent out external IPs. For a normal end-user, it's not really going to be that big of a deal, is it? Perhaps I am wrong, but from everything I have heard about IPv6, that is what I am seeing as the trend.

It could potentially change the fundamentals of how you interact with any software that involves or uses IP addresses and any software you use that's closed source, unsupported and strictly IPv4 may cease to work at some point due to this because without translation layers in the OS that do not presently exist they'll become inoperable.