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Are we using IPv6 addresses wisely?
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Are we using IPv6 addresses wisely?

elgselgs Member
edited June 2015 in General

I understand IPv6 addresses are effectively much much more than we need, or we can imagine. However, I'm somehow confused the way we are spending them today. It's not uncommon for a server provider to provide tens, hundreds, or even more IPv6 addresses per server. Do we really need that many? Think about the way we use IPv4 addresses, 127.0.0.0 is totally wasted, it's about 16.7 million addresses, also 169.254.x.x. I don't have much knowledge about IPv6, yet. So what I said above might be totally wrong.

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Comments

  • A standard IPv6 subnet is a /64 which is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 seperate IP addresses. The reasoning for this is, and I quote from RFC 5375 – IPv6 Unicast Address Assignment Considerations

    "Using a subnet prefix length other than a /64 will break many features of IPv6, amongst other things Neighbor Discovery (ND), Secure Neighborship Discovery (SEND) [RFC3971], privacy extensions [RFC4941], parts of Mobile IPv6 [RFC4866], PIM-SM with Embedded-RP [RFC3956], and SHIM6 [SHIM6]. A number of other features currently in development, or being proposed, also rely on /64 subnet prefixes.

    Nevertheless, many IPv6 implementations do not prevent the administrator from configuring a subnet prefix length shorter or longer than 64 bits. Using subnet prefixes shorter than /64 would rarely be useful; see Appendix B.1 for discussion.

    However, some network administrators have used prefixes longer than /64 for links connecting routers, usually just two routers on a point-to-point link. On links where all the addresses are assigned by manual configuration, and all nodes on the link are routers (not end hosts) that are known by the network administrators do not need"

  • Summury of OP's post:

    omg omg we're going to run out of the 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 available IPs, omg omg omg omg omg omg omg

  • ricardoricardo Member
    edited June 2015

    well we only need 2^63 more devices and that's a distinct possibility!

    Thanked by 2rm_ deadbeef
  • TACServersTACServers Member
    edited June 2015

    Ill quote rednectar.net/2012/05/24/just-how-many-ipv6-addresses-are-there-really/

    Given that the first 3 bits of a public IPv6 address are always 001, giving /48 allocations to customers means that service providers will only have 2^(48-3) or 2^45 allocations of /48 to hand out to a population of approximately 6 billion people. 2^33 is over 8 billion, so assuming a population of 2^33, there will be enough IPv6 /48 allocations to cater for 2^(45-33) or 2^12 or **4096 IPv6 address allocations per user in the world.**
    

    That's calculating /48 allocations, per person, at a global population of 8 Billion. If I ran out of /64s allocating one /64 per VPS out of a /48, I'd be really happy. Financially. That's 65536 allocated subnets.

    Thanked by 1rm_
  • HBAndreiHBAndrei Member, Top Host, Host Rep

    deadbeef said: Summury of OP's post:

    omg omg we're going to run out of the 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 available IPs, omg omg omg omg omg omg omg

    Remember the time when folks thought 640k RAM would be enough? :D

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
    edited June 2015

    HBAndrei said: Remember the time when folks thought 640k RAM would be enough? :D

    Aye, hence he assumed /48 per each device per person I believe, which is a good buffer :-).

  • Until we get to the galaxy wide web I don't think IPv6 exhaustion is likely to be a problem.

    Besides if we ever do get that far who says we'd even be using TCP/IP.

    Thanked by 1elgs
  • HBAndreiHBAndrei Member, Top Host, Host Rep

    dragon2611 said: galaxy wide web

    gww. doesn't sound so good, we'll have to come up with a better name for it.

    Thanked by 2Traffic elgs
  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
    edited June 2015

    HBAndrei said: gww. doesn't sound so good, we'll have to come up with a better name for it.

    and possibly a better firewall :)

  • good to see dead:beef weighing in on ipv6.

    Thanked by 1deadbeef
  • J1021J1021 Member

    @ricardo said:
    good to see dead:beef weighing in on ipv6.

    ::b00b

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    HBAndrei said: Remember the time when folks thought 640k RAM would be enough? :D

    I know the math, but somehow, someway, we will find a way to exhaust ipv6. It's the way humans work.

  • MicrolinuxMicrolinux Member
    edited June 2015

    @elgs said: Are we using IPv6 addresses wisely?

    Yes.

    IPv6 allocation is not not analogous to IPv4 allocation. IPv6 is not only a larger address space, it's a fundamentally different addressing scheme with different operational considerations. Attempting to compare the two is folly. IPv6 allocation is not based on "need", you have to get that out of your head (admittedly tough to do after so many years of IPv4).

    Thanked by 2Spirit ATHK
  • To add to the fact that they choose to use /64 as a subnet prefix which seems excessive. Google bought a /96 block.

  • KuJoeKuJoe Member, Host Rep
    edited June 2015

    @MINIMAN10000 said:
    To add to the fact that they choose to use /64 as a subnet prefix which seems excessive. Google bought a /96 block.

    Why would Google buy such a small block? ARIN gives them out for free.

    A /96 is only 4294967296 addresses, we give every client 18446744073709551616 addresses (/64) so Google got ripped off.

  • @KuJoe said:
    Google got ripped off.

    Google.CN, that got booted out of China, which has no use for IPv6 so they just bought a /96.

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    /96 is non routable. Recheck your sources @TheOnlyDK.

  • @Clouvider said:
    /96 is non routable.

    Uhh what? Did I say that it's routable or usable?

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
    edited June 2015

    Why would they 'buy' it if they can't do anything with it? Where did you find this information? From a networking and logical point of view it makes no sense.

  • TheOnlyDKTheOnlyDK Member
    edited June 2015

    @Clouvider

    I wasn't the one said Google bought it, I just commented on it saying Google yet again bought something useless. And I even said it's probably for google.cn which is useless sitting there as a redirect domain. I believe you misunderstood what I said but I understand what you are saying (and I agree too).

    @MINIMAN10000 said:
    To add to the fact that they choose to use /64 as a subnet prefix which seems excessive. Google bought a /96 block.

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    @TheOnlyDK please excuse me, I'm on my mobile, I have tagged wrong person... :/.

    The question stands for @MINIMAN10000

    Thanked by 1TheOnlyDK
  • @Clouvider For the life of me I always reverse block sizes. Google bought a 2^96 which if I'm getting the numbers correct this time is a /32. Using https://moz.com/blog/ipv6-cblocks-and-seo as a source it appears that it is likely isps will buy blocks of /32 or 2^96 ips.

  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
    edited June 2015

    @MINIMAN10000 I wouldn't trust with technical stuff any website that still uses phrase 'C-Block'. It just doesn't exist anymore. For more than 10 years.

  • ReeRee Member

    I posted this the last time "we're going to run out" came up.

    A fact about IPv6 size I read awhile ago was that if the IPv4 address space was the size of a credit card, the IPv6 address space would be the size of our solar system. Since I'm bored, I figured I'd try to verify that.

    IPv6 = 2^128, IPv4 = 2^32. Divide one into the other and you see IPv6 address space is this many times bigger than IPv4: 79,228,162,514,264,337,593,543,950,336

    A credit card is roughly 2x3 inches, or 6 square inches. So multiply the previous number by 6 to get the IPv6 size in square inches: 475,368,975,085,586,025,561,263,702,016

    That's a big number, so let's convert to square miles: 118,413,303,421,083,971,810

    Still too big, how about square Astronomical Units: 13,704

    That's roughly the area of a circle with radius 66AU.

    Pluto's orbit takes it as far as 50AU from the sun (roughly).

    So we're talking a circle that is MUCH bigger than the orbit of Pluto (especially when you consider that Pluto has a very elliptical orbit).

    So the next time you're worried that we're going to run out of IPv6 addresses...don't.

    Thanked by 2elgs TheOnlyDK
  • BruceBruce Member

    @cncking2000 said:
    That's calculating /48 allocations, per person, at a global population of 8 Billion.

    IPv6 is not about people. it's about IoT, mostly. 70 TRLLION devices, all internet connected, by 2040

  • what! :/

    Well we can have a lot of ipv6 but still being useful if ISP does not implement it. And the tunnel dont work.

  • TACServersTACServers Member
    edited June 2015

    @Bruce - Can't wait for the Internet of Threats. Who is going to patch their refrigerator, toaster, oven, lights, garage openers, doorbells, water heaters, furnaces, thermostats, and ceiling fans when they can't even patch a router? All IoT device manufactures need to implement ways to force updates to these devices. Can you imagine a 7 BILLION device botnet? That's only 1% of your mentioned 70 Trillion devices being infected, and I am sure current infected computer and device counts are above 1% of the total of the internet, today. :/

    Thanked by 2raindog308 Infinity
  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider
    edited June 2015

    @cncking2000 you better ask for the extended support contract to get software upgrades for your new smart fridge ;)

  • @cncking2000 said:
    Bruce - Can't wait for the Internet of Threats. Who is going to patch their refrigerator, toaster, oven, lights, garage openers, doorbells, water heaters, furnaces, thermostats, and ceiling fans when they can't even patch a router?

    Reading the text agreeing and then....

    All IoT device manufactures need to implement ways to force updates to these devices.

    Instapwn!!!!!!!!! :D

  • @Clouvider - Yes, hi, I'm calling to extend my FRIDGEnet Service. EOL? What? It's only 6 years old!

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