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very device that connects to the Internet needs an address to get bits delivered to it, just like your home has a street address so that FedEx, UPS or the post office can leave you packages. On the Internet, they are called IP addresses. Currently, there are 2 types of addresses on the internet – IPv4, and IPv6.
IPv4 is still used every day and has over 4.3 billion IP addresses – but that is not enough. Followers of the Bach Seat know most of the original IPv4 addresses are no longer available. In 2011 Asia ran out of IPV4 addresses, and in 2015 the U.S. ran out.
Just last week (11/25/2019) RIPE, the organization that handles IPv4 addresses for 76 countries in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia announced that it ran out of IPv4 addresses. “We made our final /22 (1,022 address netblock) IPv4 allocation from the last remaining addresses in our available pool.”
IPv6 is a not-so-new specification, created in 1995 to replace IPv4. IPv6 has over 340 undecillion IPv6 addresses.
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A tell-tale sign of a dysfunctional market is the evolution of a grey market. Followers of Bach Seat know that a grey market in IPv4 addresses has existed since 2011. IPv4 prices on the grey market can range from $11 – $33 per address, meaning the IPv4 transfer market is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars globally.
ars points out that end-users and the SMB market are largely unaffected by IPv4-address exhaustion. They can still connect to the web and do what they need to do.
They predict that new Internet service providers will be the first to really feel the IPv4 exhaustion pinch. They will need IP addresses firms know-how to deal with (hint- it’s not IPv6) to hand out. According to ars this could include cloud providers such as Conga, Digital Ocean, Huddle, and Optiv who also act as Internet Service Providers.
If you are an incumbent ISP this is a good thing, for everybody else it is a significant barrier to entry for new players in either local or cloud ISP markets.
They conclude that full adoption of IPv6 and its 340 undecillion individual addresses is the way around the incumbent oligarchy.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.