[LINK] Forum on high speed bandwidth in Australia

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Rick Welykochy wrote:
> Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> 
>> A couple of storiess....that may be of relevance to the subject if not the form 
>> of the forum:
>>
>>  > It is believed that the IP4 addresses will run out by April 2010, which will 
>> make it necessary for users to move over to IPv6, or the next version that 
>> supports a total of 16 billion IP addresses
<http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/India_will_run_out_of_IP_addresses_by_2010-nid-56298.html>

> 
> What does that last sentence mean? Can IP4 be extended somehow to accommodate
> 16 billion addresses instead of the current 4 billion (approx)?
> 

I interpret the sentence as an "IPv7" could support 16 billion IP addresses.

 From Wikipedia:

> Larger address space
> 
> The most important feature of IPv6 is a much larger address space than that of IPv4: addresses in IPv6 are 128 bits long; this compares with 32 bit addresses in IPv4.
> 
> The very large IPv6 address space supports a total of 2128 (about 3.4×1038) addresses?or approximately 5×1028 (roughly 295) addresses for each of the roughly 6.5 billion (6.5×109) people alive in 2006.[9] In a different perspective, this is 252 addresses for every observable star in the known universe.[10]
> 
> While these numbers are impressive, it was not the intent of the designers of the IPv6 address space to assure geographical saturation with usable addresses. Rather, the longer addresses allow a better, systematic, hierarchical allocation of addresses and efficient route aggregation. 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#Larger_address_space>

> As of April 21, 2009, Geoff Huston of APNIC predicts with detailed daily 
simulations an exhaustion of the unallocated IANA pool in August 2011.[1] As of
March 2009, Tony Hain of networking equipment manufacturer Cisco Systems
predicts the exhaustion date to be around July 2011.[2] These predictions are
derived from current trends, and do not take into account any last chance rush
to acquire the last available addresses. After the IANA pool exhaustion, during
14 months each individual regional Internet registry (RIR) will be able to
supply with their last assigned addresses. These dates lie within a depreciation
time of five to ten years of network equipment that is currently being acquired.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion>

I recall a very heated discussion about the allocation of IP addresses on 
another mailing list. I would like to understand a bit more about how this stuff 
is Governed.

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: (+61)0414 869202