Bill Mc
Senior Member
Can Al Gore save us.
From WPX News.
From WPX News.
Editor's Corner
Are We Really facing the End of the Internet?
As if the news weren't already bad enough, with the media blaring away every minute of every day about the oil shortage and the food shortage, now we have yet another shortage to worry about. The London Times Online recently went way out on a limb in the sensational predictions department, stating that "the end of the Internet is nigh - and in less than three years."
http://www.wxpnews.com/LC4VU3/080722-End-of-the-Internet
Based on the article's sub-headline ("The world is heading for a digital doomsday as the net fast runs out of numerical addresses"), you would think we might as well all prepare to go back to the 80s communication modes (but oh, dear - what if you've already canceled your regular phone service? Woe is us!). Must we get used to the idea that in the not-so-distant future, the only use we'll have for our computers will be for standalone games, word processing and spreadsheets, etc.? Will politicians use this as an excuse to raise taxes to "save the Internet?" Will address conservationists pass laws to discourage "wasteful" use of IP addresses? Will we have to undergo IP address rationing? Will presidential candidates argue over whether we should drill for more addresses or pour money into finding alternative address sources?
Well, not exactly. The article makes a big deal out of the fact that the supply of public IP addresses is dwindling, and each Internet-connected server or network needs a public IP to identify it to the rest of the world. And it's true that back when the Internet Protocol (IP) system we use now was designed, it was never envisioned that we'd have all these devices getting onto the Internet. At that point in time, who could have guessed that there would be well over 200 million mobile phone subscriptions in the U.S.? Or that many of those cell phones would have access to the Internet? Heck, as we discussed last week, even refrigerators and washing machines are going online these days. And those Internet-connected devices need IP addresses, too.
However, there are ways to get around the "public IP address for every device" dilemma. Most cable and DSL routers use NAT, or Network Address Translation, to allow multiple computers and devices on a home network to share one public IP address. In fact, NAT has been credited with "saving the day" when commercial use of the Internet boomed in the 1990s and the impending shortage of addresses was first anticipated. The Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) built into Windows XP and Vista is another implementation of NAT. Prior to its inclusion in Windows, many home networks used software such as WinGate to provide NAT services.
NAT works by establishing a gateway that connects to the Internet and has a public IP address. Multiple computers "behind" the NAT (on the internal network) all appear to other Internet computers as if they were the same computer. Within the internal network, each computer has a private IP address (one that is not visible to computers on the other side of the NAT gateway). The NAT device is responsible for "translating" these private addresses so that incoming data can be routed to the correct internal system. NAT does provide a modicum of security by "hiding" the internal computers from direct access by the Internet, but it doesn't prevent viruses and many other types of attacks. And some protocols don't work well with NAT, although a technique called NAT traversal can solve some of the problems.
Still, it's accepted wisdom that although NAT has delayed the day when we run out of addresses, it won't postpone the inevitable forever. The ultimate solution to the address shortage is to switch from the current version of the Internet Protocol, IPv4, to the newest version, IPv6 (yes, we skipped 5).
IPv4 supports a theoretical maximum of a little over 4 billion addresses, which seemed like far more than enough to the founders of the Internet. And that's why they got a bit sloppy when they started allocating those addresses. As a result, many of those addresses are not available for public use. Many industry experts have predicted that the pool of available addresses will all be used up sometime in the next three years, with exact exhaustion dates ranging from late 2010 to early 2011.
The new system, IPv6, supports a much larger address space. In fact, it's so large that the number itself is difficult to notate - it's usually described as 2 to the 128th power. The actual number is:
340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. If you gave up on naming that number after you passed a decillion, you're not alone. It's a number that's way too big for most of us to imagine.
How do we refer to IP addresses? Remember that although we humans denote IPv4 addresses in "dotted decimal" format (e.g., 192.168.1.1), computers only "think" in binary. The machine-readable version of that address is 11000000 10101000 00000001 00000001. Each binary digit in an address is called a "bit." If you count the 0s and 1s in an IPv4 address, you see that each IPv4 address is a 32 bit number.
IPv6, on the other hand, uses 128 bit numbers. Instead of the dotted decimal notation, IPv6 addresses are notated in hexadecimal (also known as base 16). In the hexadecimal (often shortened to "hex") counting system uses - in addition to the "normal" numerical characters 0 through 9 - the alphabetic characters A through F. These letters represent the values that, in our normal base 10 system, we would think of as 10 through 15. Hex is useful for representing binary values because each hexadecimal digit can represent four binary digits. The IPv4 address has four parts, separated by periods or "dots." An IPv6 address, written in hex, has eight parts, separated by colons. It looks like this: 3ffe:0501:0008:0000:0260:97ff:fe40:efab
Sometimes the leading 0s in a field are omitted, and multiple fields of 0s are represented by double colons. Thus the address above can be written in "short form" as: 3ffe:501:8::260:97ff:fe40:efab
As you can see, making the change from IPv4 to IPv6 is a lot more complicated than just adding more addresses to the pool, and the above is a very simplified description of IPv6 and doesn't take into account special addresses (such as local link, site-local addresses and non-routed addresses) or different IPv6 address types such as unicast, multicast and anycast. The transition to IPv6 will require a whole new way of looking at IP addresses. No wonder so many companies and individuals are reluctant to switch over to the new system, even though that switch will solve the address exhaustion problem for a long, long time. IT pros who work with IP addresses every day will have to learn the new system, and some older equipment is just not designed to handle the new addressing scheme.
Modern routers and computer operating systems are designed to support IPv6, and since IPv6 compatibility is primarily a software issue, support can be added to some older systems. However, some devices aren't upgradeable because the software is in permanent Read Only Memory (ROM), and some older devices that can be upgraded will suffer drastic performance slow-downs. Commercial routers have been IPv6 capable for years, but that's not the case with inexpensive home routers. And many consumer-level Internet applications don't have support for IPv6, although that support could be added if the software vendor will provide it in updates.
The Times article says, "The problem is that the new system is not really compatible with the internet today." I guess the writer doesn't realize that IPv4 and IPv6 currently coexist. The Internet's root DNS servers now support both IPv4 and IPv6. Some organizations have bitten the bullet and implemented IPv6 on their internal networks. Others are waiting until they're forced to do so. IPv4 and IPv6 systems and networks can communicate with each other, using mechanisms such as encapsulating IPv6 packets inside IPv4 packets (tunneling) and dual-stack proxies.
Once all the available public addresses (which are assigned by IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) have been allocated, any new systems connecting directly to the Internet (such as servers that require a public address) will not have a choice; they'll have to use IPv6 addresses. But will this mean a dramatic change in your life? Probably not - despite the "doomsday" language of the article that spurred this rant. In fact, many consumers today don't even know they have an IP address or what it is or how it works - and that's unlikely to change as ISPs, operating systems and routers transition to using IPv6.
Tell us what you think. Do you lie awake at night, worrying about the world running out of IP addresses? Do you dread the day when you'll have to trade in your comfortable, familiar IPv4 address for an IPv6 one? Or are you eager to dump your old 32 bit address for a shiny new 128 bit model? Or do you not really care one way or the other? Did this article cause you to have scary flashbacks to elementary school math classes and your childhood struggles with the so-called "new math?" Do you think it's irresponsible - or at least highly annoying - for the Times to claim the Internet is on the Eve of Destruction? Or is it just the kind of silly "reporting" you've come to expect from journalists who don't understand technology? Let us know your opinions at feedback@wxpnews.com.
