IPv4 Markets

IPv6: Beware of Dirty, Muddy IPv4 Addresses as the Pool Dries Up

Mid March a special plenary session of the Canadian standard committee isacc was convened in Ottawa to review the final report of the Canadian IPv6 Task Group. It was unanimously approved and the essence of its 66 pages are seven recommendations for Government, Industry, Service and Content providers, and the regulator, CRTC to proceed with diligence, even some sense of urgency. One paragraph provides an interesting new twist... more

MIT 2010 Spam Conference Starts Tomorrow…

In January we presented the glorious history of the MIT spam conference, today we present the schedule for the first day. Opening session will be from this author, Garth Buren with a topic entitled The Internet Doomsday Book, with details be released the same day as the presentation. Followed by Dr. Robert Bruen with a review of activities since the last MIT spam conference... more

Country Internet Registries: One African Perspective

Paul Wilson, Secretary-General of APNIC, was correct when he reminded the panelists of the IGF2009 workshop "Adopting IPv6: What You Need To Know" that "countries don't typically get IP address allocations, network service providers do". The ITU stills seems to cling to the notion that countries get IP blocks... more

IPv6 Answers to Common Questions from Policy Makers, Executives and Other Non-Technical Readers

A factual paper prepared in October 2009 for and endorsed by the Chief Executive Officers of ICANN and all the Regional Internet Registries that provides answers to commonly asked questions about IPv6 such as: How are allocations made, and to whom? How are IPv6 addresses actually being allocated? And why did such large IPv4 address allocations go to US organizations, including the US Government, and its Department of Defense? more

IPv6, Phone Numbers and Analogies

My local area code (814) is running out of phone numbers. When discussing IPv6 with non-technical folks, I frequently use the hypothetical scenario of running out of phone numbers as an analogy for IPv4 address depletion. The conversation usually goes like this: "Imagine if we were running out of phone numbers. One way of solving that problem would be to make them bigger. Instead of ten digits, what if we made then thirty digits? If we did that, how many other things would we have to change? Some mundane things like business cards, letterhead, and phone books. But also more substantial things..." more

IPv6, LTE and IPSO: Not So Long Term Evolution to 50 Billion Devices

Who would dare to predict the year the Internet will reach 50 billion addressable devices? Thomas Noren, head of LTE product development at Ericsson sees one day 50 billion devices shouldered by LTE. He sees LTE as the truly global standard putting to rest the long and acrimonious rivalry between CDMA and GSM protagonists and even sees the Chinese third way with their TD-SCDMA aligned on LTE. Mobile WiMax is, in his mind, already relegated to the dustbin of history... more

FUD for Thought: ARIN Releases Comic Books

The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has launched a comic book series to further help raise awareness for the adoption of IPv6 and other matters dealt by the organization. The comic books, called "Team ARIN", are fictionalized views of the organization, its processes, and the whole concept of Internet governance. "Though our heroes are fictional, the issues they face are very real," says ARIN. more

IPv6 a Case of Confirmation Bias

Is the glass half full or half empty? The human reflex of selective deafness to information or arguments countering one’s established believes lives on. The ISOC organized lunchtime IPv6 panel at IETF 74 in San Francisco illustrates the point... more

Proposed Law Seeks to Expose Internet Addressing for Child Safety

U.S. Republican politicians on Thursday introduced a bill that would require Internet service providers and network operators to track the use of and maintain records for their publicly accessible wired and wireless networks. Two bills have been introduced... Each of the bills carries the title "Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act," and is referred to as the "Internet SAFETY Act." more

A Seismic Shift: IPv4 Numbers Becoming Transferable and Consequently Property

A Tipping Point for the Internet? Catching the precise moment of a tectonic shift in a global system as large and important as the Internet may be viewed as an exercise in the improbable. However, I point out in this summary that I think we are precisely in the midst of such a shift... more

Why 2008 Was a Milestone Year for IPv6

The beginning of the year saw IPv6 added to the DNS root, closing a major hole for IPv6-only communication. In mid-year, the US federal government's IPv6 mandate came into effect, requiring all federal IP backbones to support IPv6. While the mandate didn't have anywhere near the effect that many had hoped for, it did spur many vendors to add IPv6 support to their products. The amount of observed IPv6 traffic increased considerably, but we still lack good data for how much IPv6 is being used. So, where were we at the end of 2008? more

First Broad Internet Census Since 1982 Reveals Surprising Number of Unused IPv4 Addresses

In the upcoming Internet Measurement Conference being held next week in Vouliagmeni, Greece, a team of six researchers will be presenting a paper called "Census and Survey of the Visible Internet," based on a comprehensive census of more 2.8 billion allocated IP addresses on the Internet. The research is claimed to be the first comprehensive census of its kind in more than two decades. more

IP Address Allocation vs. Internet Production I: Understanding the Relationship, and the Differences

It is sometimes said that: 'IP addresses are hoarded by "developed nations" - if only "underdeveloped" nations were given more IP addresses, the Internet would grow more/better...' Assertions like this mistakenly conflate the administrative process of requesting and receiving public IP addresses with the economic or commercial act of routing IP addresses - of engaging in what is sometimes called "Internet production." The former, administrative process involves relatively little in the way of overhead, and confers nothing more than the potential to develop public Internet resources -- i.e., to create new Internet users (provide access) and/or Internet uses (provide content and other online services). more

Is It Time to Create a Market for IPv4 Addresses?

It's fascinating to watch the Internet technical community grapple with policy economics as they face the problems creating by the growing scarcity of IPv4 addresses. The Internet Governance Project (IGP) is analyzing the innovative policies that ARIN, RIPE and APNIC are considering as a response to the depletion of IPv4 addresses. more

IPv6 and Airline Tickets… Tales of Two Transitions

The internet bus continues to accelerate straight into the IPv4 address depletion wall with spirited discussions continuing on how to divvy up the remnants of the address space. Obviously all five Regional Internet Registries (RIR's) want to make sure they get their fair share from IANA but what is a fair share remains the subject of interpretation. In the mean time, scenarios of a speculative land rush and auctions of ever smaller address blocks abound with unattractive consequences such as an explosion of the size of the routing table and a stunted growth of the global internet economy... In the meantime, the airline industry completed a rather significant migration of their own... more