Official: North America COMPLETELY OUT of new IPv4 addresses

[Thomas the Tank Engine]

North America has officially run dry of new IPv4 addresses, the numbers that computers use to find each other on the internet.

This means the region can allocate no more of the 32-bit network addresses to web hosting companies, cloud providers, organizations and individuals: they're all taken. The space is full, and it's being heralded as a key milestone in the internet's growth.

In the past few minutes, ARIN – the non-profit that oversees the allocation of IP addresses in North America – confirmed the available pool of the 32-bit network addresses is totally depleted. Last night, the team estimated there were just 1,024 IPv4 addresses left in its pool – dregs, in other words. Now that's all gone.

"The exhaustion of the free IPv4 pool was inevitable given the internet’s exponential growth,” ARIN boss John Curran said today.

The IPv4 space globally offers 4,294,967,296 network addresses – which seemed like an awful lot back in the 1970s when the internet was coming together. (Not all of those are usable on the public internet as some chunks are reserved. For example, the familiar 10.x.x.x and 192.168.x.x blocks are used for internal networks.)

Since then, the, er, information superhighway, cyber-space, or whatever you want to call it, has exploded, and the seemingly endless supply of IPv4 addresses is running out.

APNIC, which allocates addresses in Asia-Pacific, more or less ran out of available IPv4 addresses in 2011; RIPE, which oversees Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, was running on fumes by 2012; and LACNIC, which manages Latin America and the Caribbean, hit rock bottom in 2014. All that's left is AFRINIC, which oversees Africa, and is expected to run out of IPv4 addresses in 2019.

So, what happens next? Well, the world is moving over to IPv6 networking – some parts of the web are shifting rapidly, while others (including the UK) are dragging their feet.

IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, and there are 3.4 × 1038 available – that's 340 undecillion, although, practically speaking, 42 undecillion are usable. Plenty to go around now that IPv4 is scarce, in other words.

 

 

Read the rest: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/24/arin_ipv4_interview_ipv6/

[JustGeorge]

I hope I never have to memorize an ipv6 address for any reason.

[Kelxin]

From my experiences so far, IPv6 has me extremely worried about security and usability.   I personally don't want every server and device I own directly accessible and attackable from the internet.

[Draconian Guppy]

From my experiences so far, IPv6 has me extremely worried about security and usability.   I personally don't want every server and device I own directly accessible and attackable from the internet.

with ipv6 public ips are not needed? pardon my ignorance-.