IPv4 addresses used up
Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2019 7:13 am
What does the slash mean in /22 and /8 and so on?
It's the size of subnet - roughly the size of the pool of addresses that a machine will try to talk to directly rather than going via a gateway if it's in your network subnet settings, or in this particular situation, an assignment of a subset of the total IPV4 address space to a subsidiary authority for them to assign.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 1:57 pmWhat does the slash mean in /22 and /8 and so on?
It's times like this I realise I have zero clue how the internet actually works.
Or use bonsai kittens.Little waster wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 3:17 pmNo we just have to squeeze the kittehs closer together.
The RIPE annoucement above mentions carrier grade NAT, which is one way of dealing with things. For devices that don't need fixed IP addresses (pretty much anything that you could happily use on a home WiFi network), then you can do NAT all the way up to the ISP gateway level .greyspoke wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 4:44 pmI have been wondering about this since we were sternly told that ipv6 was where we were going several years ago. I suppose my ISP has its batch of v4 addresses and will carry on using them. I think my router will need a firmware upgrade before it can speak them.
Carrier Grade NAT (or at least the version my ISP used) does not play nicely with dynamic DNS services. The 'solutions' I have seen start with "First get a VPS with a public IP address..." and describe how to set up a persistent tunnel to the VPS from the device behind CGN and send all inbound and outbound traffic through that tunnel.dyqik wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 4:46 pmThe RIPE annoucement above mentions carrier grade NAT, which is one way of dealing with things. For devices that don't need fixed IP addresses (pretty much anything that you could happily use on a home WiFi network), then you can do NAT all the way up to the ISP gateway level .greyspoke wrote: ↑Tue Nov 26, 2019 4:44 pmI have been wondering about this since we were sternly told that ipv6 was where we were going several years ago. I suppose my ISP has its batch of v4 addresses and will carry on using them. I think my router will need a firmware upgrade before it can speak them.
One.com has just completed its migration of all subscriptions to the IPv6 standard.
But what is an IP anyways?
You might have heard of IP (Internet Protocol) before: Whenever you go online, your internet service provider provides you with an IP address, for example, 192.168.1.1. This allows other devices to identify and connect to you. Now, if you open One.com, you connect to the IP 46.30.211.35. It will then send the homepage to your IP address.
As you can see, each IP address consists of four blocks of numbers — this defines the IPv4 standard, which is still the most used standard. You can imagine that with more and more people, servers and smart toasters going online, those IP’s might sooner or later run out. In fact, they already have: back in 2011, all 4.3 billion combinations were distributed for good! Without an alternative, new websites, companies or even entire emerging markets wouldn’t have any chance to engage in the online world.
This is where IPv6 comes to the rescue because it allows for much more complex IP addresses (e.g., 200185a3:0000:0000:8a2e7334), increasing the number of available IP’s dramatically. IPv6 was already established back in 1998; however, it took many years for websites, let alone internet service providers to implement it robustly. Twenty years later, we are finally ready to roll out IPv6 to your websites.
The numbers speak for themselves
One out of five sites now uses IPv6 according to Google, though adoption levels vary by country. Only a handful of nations deliver more than 5% of traffic over IPv6. Belgium provides an encouraging outlook; it is the first country in the world to deliver more than half of its traffic to content providers over IPv6 according to InternetSociety report 2018.
But what does this mean for me?
First of all, your DNS settings in your Control Panel have gotten just a bit more granular. For instance, you can now turn on and off access to your domain via IPv6 by toggling the respective “standard web DNS settings.”
As more and more internet service providers allow their customers to access the internet via IPv6 by default, this will reduce latencies.
And most importantly, your domain has just gotten future-proof, and you didn’t even have to lift a finger for it, allowing you to take care of the things that matter the most: building your website!
Ouch. A good example of a Ping of Death. Your network administrators must love this. IIRC, Windows PCs these days automatically run 'dual stack', so that implies someone plugging in a Windows PC unannounced will crash the antennas. Which is probably not good. To be fair, recent Linux distributions also implement dual stack, but I'd expect Linux users in general to have a bit more of a clue not to plug in devices where they are not wanted.
Plusnet (also my isp) don't do v6 so the ip address they give your router will be a v4 one (I checked). Providers that do v6 give you a range of globally unique ip addresses, enough for each device to have one, which is apparently the reason why it is a good thing. Probably you could do v6 locally but I am not sure there would be much point until your router can speak to the internet at large in v6 (assuming your router speaks v6). You're stuck with NAT which is apparently the bad thing with ipv4.rockdoctor wrote: ↑Fri Nov 29, 2019 8:38 pmIf I want to be all modern, what is involved in switching from 4 to 6?
I have a largish home ethernetwork connected to Plusnet. Most things seem to be '6-compatible' these days, but I have the impression I still need to actively switch over...?
It's more commonly called Internet Stream Protocol .