Is the end of the Internet really near?
There is one humorous (and slightly hyperbolic) discussion surrounding IPv6 that is relatively ubiquitous around cyberspace: The Internet is doomed on *date* unless IPv6 is adopted
In order to have an intelligent discussion surrounding this issue it usually involves a very detailed and technical discussion surrounding packet-switching technologies like Internet Protocol (IP). And honestly, this bores even the most adept CIO or CTO. So, in order to make this exciting and enliven some immediacy, the hyperbole sets it. So I’d really like to address this issue, and to the best of my ability, not make your eyes glaze over and push you back to Facebook.
The Internet is dooooomed!!
No, it’s probably not, it was built to survive a nuclear holocost, so this won’t kill it. However, with the slow pace of IPv6 adoption, capability of IPv6 service offerings, and the overall market penetration North America is at a considerable economic, political and cyber security disadvantage. So it’s only natural to assume the Internet as we know it is doomed. Realistically, we just need the collective will to get over this hurdle. Fox News recently spoke about this very issue in a very fear-inducing way as well earlier this month. The story itself was accurate, but the headlines were more catchy than true.
Where are we right now?
We aren’t that far behind the adoption of IPv6. So don’t get too paranoid, we have a considerable amount of planning and road maps out there. The government (and DoD) are already on the ball. The DoD finalized a core-wide migration of IPv6 in 2008 and the U.S. Federal Government met a simple OMB mandate in 2008 as well. The DoD even has the larget IPv6 address block in the world. North American service providers have already either announced beta offerings (like Comcast) to complete offerings now (like Hurricane Electric). Even Google has a completely IPv6-enabled offering of its applications, with YouTube planned. However, the alternative solutions are almost as scary as a 3rd-rate horror flick:bartering of IPv6 addresses and double-NATs (yikes). Any network engineer will cringe on hearing either one of those scenarios be adopted.
It is true that ARIN and IANA are virtually out of IPv4 address space. You can follow a real-time tally here… As of this writing, the world only has 26 (of 256) /8 address blocks left. This is just 10% remaining, calculating 648 days remaining. The ominous clock is ticking. But what will happen on day zero? Fundamentally, nothing. It’s what starts to happen immediately afterward. Will North America work towards IPv6 adoption, or will it start to barter leftover space? For example, if I am Verizon and I need more IPv4 address space I could put out a Craig’s List-type request through the RIRs. Company X, that has a spare /24 (Class C) could sell it. Seems good right? The market has spoken right? No… In fact, from a macro-level, this will cause global latency the Internet has never seen. The more we fragment address space and have multiple summarization points the harder those routers will have to work.
What about a double NAT? Believe it or not, even private address space (RFC 1918) is not even enough space for some large and growing networks. So they will either have to double NAT, meaning have multiple translation points, or expand the sharing of one private address. This means that you and your neighbor will share the same private address space on your home networks. So since NAT uses a standard address to port mapping algorithm, collisions and time-outs are likely as we all start to net-enable everything in our house.
Where we still need a lot of work…
There is also a cyber security issue. As we spoke about in a previous post, our society and infrastructure depends upon the Internet (electric grid, work, telecommunications, etc). If we can’t protect it with a new protocol on the horizon, we are in real trouble. There have been numerous studies, articles and discussions surrounding this threat. Also, with a galvanized and lucrative cyber-terrorism industry from China and Russia, it pays them to use IPv6 to attack. They have, and still do, to this day. Some complete cyber security solutions exist to protect this threat, but they are not yet adopted within the industry yet.
The day, the routers died…
So to wrap up, we aren’t doomed, yet.. We are more likely to die of sun spot activity than the Internet collapsing in 2012. Or… join in for a classic IPv6 tune! See below!
