Okay… Stop me if you’ve heard this before: We only have 6% of the world’s supply of IPv4 address left to hand out and if we don’t do something really fast… (sounds of Todd screeching to a halt!) Phew…Thanks for stopping me. This just isn’t breaking news anymore, and it’s becoming a pretty tired topic being discussed to death in the ever-growing number of tech blogs that interestingly, are just now starting to bring it up.

I’ve gotta say, cheers mates… it’s about time! I mean really, where have they been? I’ve only been writing and talking about impending IPv4 address exhaustion for years now, which means that it’s no longer something I want to blog about. Still, I have to admit that pretty much everything that we’ll be doing at work or on The Net from here on out will have at least something to do with that IPv4 lack of addresses issue. It’s true, I’m not kidding, but I promise to explain without digressing into “The IPv4 Event Horizon” thing.

Because we need to use a new, larger addressing scheme, many companies and world government agencies are taking advantage of this IPv4 issue to create a new, controllable internet, so although this blog may sort of resemble a techno-thriller movie script, it’s all too real to ignore. Believe it or not, if you dig around enough, you’ll find that most of this is straight out of the newspapers, though it may be buried deeply and certainly blurred a bit.

With the government now having complete and absolute power to shut down the existing Internet “in the name of national security” (referring to the 197-page senate bill entitled, “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act”), Google has commandeered a /32 IPv6 address, effectively crowning themselves an ISP with hundreds of millions of IPv6 addresses (see figure of where Google’s IPv6 address starts by clicking here).

Want to get on the new Internet? No worries! Just pay Google and you get to go to any of the new sites that they’ve deemed safe and desirable for you—a decision based upon your past search results, of course. Want to set your business up so people can see and maybe even buy your products? Again—no worries… Just pay that piper, and once you’re on the “white list” of government approved sites, people with a credit card used for an Internet subscription—much like your cable provider uses today—can get to your site and bleed some cash.

So it’s pay to play or no Net for you! Sounds like SciFi, doesn’t it, but sadly, it’s all too true. And it’s not even that big of a reach. Not all that long ago, people would have been totally shocked at the thought of paying anything except the electric bill for TV. Now it’s complete reality—no TV without paying…Period! Pretty good analogy except for the fact that the subscriber-only TV conversion happened slowly, over many years, and we just don’t have that kind of time because of “that subject” we’re oh-so tired of yammering about here.

Google (of course) denies this whole pay to get to the Internet thing, yet their hush-hush talks with Verizon seem to keep inconveniently popping up and making the news. This, while both organizations keep emphatically denying any and all of it and loudly singing the “net-neutrality must be protected” anthem. As always though, actions sing much louder, and their words are empty as my wallet probably will be after blogging this because their clandestine deals are getting closer and closer to closing down our current Internet as I write!

Now back to the government for a second. Large ISPs are somehow okay with this new senate bill because it contains language that will give them immunity from civil lawsuits and also reimburse them for any costs incurred if the Internet just so happens to be shut down for a period of time. Wow-hey, nice work if you can get it right? Get paid to not work, or even to shut your company down for a breather—sweet! Anyone who has ever been in line/on hold to a government office or service agency knows this does in fact curiously resemble how efficiently or not our current government tends to work.

Seriously—this is some real power we’re talking about. Think about it for minute… Just regulate free Internet speech and control the media and you gain unprecedented control over an entire country! Don’t think this is a unique U.S. idea, no way. It’s been “borrowed” from China and New Zealand, Australia and even the U.K are very much behind it too! Personally, I’m thinking the U.K. will be the first to pull the plug on the existing Internet, but only time can tell. It’s just really hard to ignore because it is a fact that they passed an unprecedented censorship bill in April of this year, which will pretty much kill their current Internet whenever they decide to. This little detail is pretty blasted ominous, and tells me I’m probably not too far off the mark with this little prediction.

Recent releases under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that social media outlets such as YouTube, Google, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr and Yahoo have waived rules on monitoring users and permitting companies to track visitors to government web sites for advertising purposes. At the same time, the U.S. military has invested more than $30 billion towards its own understanding and ability to control the new Internet (the DoD, which creates defacto standards was suppose to have IPv6 on all their backbones by 2008, but hey, they did it by 2010 – and their new goal of an end-to-end IPv6 Internet is what they are spending all this money on!). To me, these factors clearly indicate that this information is unquestionably important and we shouldn’t just be blowing it off as hype for sure!

Well, knowledge is power right? Right… So use this information to create a solid plan to bag some sharp new skills, fine tuned specifically for this new controlled environment now, while you’re still ahead of the pack. I know I am! I can’t get enough of studying anything and everything IPv6 like crazy, and since I am a network guy, I’m working with as many government agencies and companies as possible to keep in step with the latest Intel and info on our ‘Brave New Internet.” And I’m not doing all this because I’m into techno-thrillers. I’m doing it all because I see it as a really exciting, new and lucrative business opportunity in what is honestly, a comparatively bleak landscape. You should too!

More on this as time progresses…

… In the meantime, be sure and check out GlobalNet Training & Consulting, inc for some really sweet training specials (including some up and coming new IPv6 classes!) and where you can find the best and only Todd Lammle Cisco Authorized training.

Cheers!
Todd Lammle

It’s been a long time since I wrote regarding Cisco Wireless technologies, and since my newest CCNA Wireless book is about to hit the shelves next week, as well as Cisco soon to be released Borderless Mobility networks, I thought I’d write a post regarding the benefits regarding the current Cisco enterprise solutions for your wireless networks.

There are basically two types of wireless networks you can install today: stand-alone (also called autonomous, and Cisco uses the two words interchangeably depending on what day of the week it is), and lightweight (controller based) solutions. The controller based solutions are becoming the defacto standard for all manufacturers today, but autonomous solutions are still available, and this solutions can be found in Cisco’s Linksys products.

If you have an autonomous solution, you have a wireless network as shown in this figure:

Autonomous APs have their own internetworking operating system (IOS). You configure them individually, and there’s no centralized administration point, as pictured. By contrast, the CUWN lightweight model solution definitely requires centralized control, which is gained via Cisco WLAN controllers ( WLCs). APs are controlled and monitored by the WLC, and al All clients and APs transmit information back to the WLC, including stats about coverage, interference, and even client data—back to the WLC as shown in the following figure:

Although the controller based solution is more expensive, the benefits can outweigh the costs because the administrative overhead can reduced. However, if you only have three or four access-points, the costs may not justify the need for a controller, depends on your needs.
All transmitted data is sent between the APs and the WLCs via an encapsulation protocol called Lightweight Access Point Protocol (LWAPP). LWAPP carries and encapsulates control information between the APs and the WLC over an encrypted tunnel. Client data is encapsulated with an LWAPP header that contains vital information about the client’s Received received Signal signal Strength strength Indicator indicator (RSSI) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Once the data has arrived at the WLC, it can be forwarded as needed, which is how the real-time processes actually become available. A couple of great benefits gained through this kind of centralized control are improved security and traffic conditioning.
The controller considers a number of RF characteristics in real time to efficiently handle channel assignments. These include the following:
-Noise
-Client load
-802.11 interference
-Utilization
-Access point received energy

The WLC can digest all this information and through the use of algorithms make decisions on the behalf of the entire system.

Another great benefit about lightweight architecture is that it allows for the splitting of 802.11 Data Link layer functions between the Lightweight AP and the WLC. The Lightweight AP handles real-time portions of the communication, and the Cisco WLC handles the items that aren’t time-sensitive. This technology is typically referred to as split MAC.

One last thing I want to mention: Cisco’s Radio Resource Management (RRM) engine is the component of the WLC that makes the magic of RF environment management possible. Through the use of dynamic algorithms, the WLC creates an environment that is completely self-configuring, self-optimizing, and self-healing. The RRM performs these functions:
• Radio resource monitoring
• Client and network load balancing
• Dynamic channel assignment
• Coverage hole detection and correction
• Dynamic transmit power control
• Interference detection and avoidance
By receiving information constantly from the APs under its control, the WLC maintains a broad and comprehensive view of the RF environment.

That’s it for now, I’ll be back shortly to blog about Cisco’s new up and coming Borderless Mobility with the new CUWN Clean-Air Technology.

In the meantime, be sure and check out http://www.globalnettraining.com/ for some really sweet specials (including my CCNA Wireless class!) and where you can find the best and only Todd Lammle Cisco Authorized training.

Cheers!
Todd Lammle

I’ve been trying to say this for years!

Finally, people are listening about the IPv4 address problems and how we must start migrating to IPv6!

Read this CNN link

Let me know what you think!

Cheers!

Todd Lammle

Wow, okay, in the U.S. yesterday, a huge national broadband plan the FCC proposed creates a national policy for the taxation of digital goods and services imposing a fee to create a national public safety wireless broadband network. Being a network guy, especially a wireless expert, I am all for expanding the wireless networks!

However, the Obama administration has a plan to do it with more taxes and higher fees. Nice.. new taxes and fees, couldn’t be better timing.

Did you hear about this? Probably not, so here it is… Google’s YouTube IPv6 traffic increased 30% last week. This intel comes to us from one of the world’s largest IPv6 ISP’s—the venerable Hurricane Electric in Fremont, Ca—whose own IPv6 traffic has already doubled this year. Just yesterday, Hurricane Electric actually claimed to be the world’s largest IPv6 ISP!

Meanwhile, across the country on the East Coast, Comcast is the IPv6 Big Dog, and is already rolling out IPv6 to test subscribers in Philadelphia of all places. And guess what? They plan to have a full, nationwide rollout by 2012. Now this is some serious info to open up a blog with, and we haven’t even talked about that IPv6 Whitelist that’s in the title yet!

Most of the time when people say something is definitely, certainly, absolutely black or white, no exceptions and no gray area, we think they can’t be right; they’re over-simplifying things and being really dramatic for affect, right? There’s just got to be a gray area to play around with, at least for a while, and with regards to IPv4 this has, in fact, been true for more than 10 years now.

But we’re running out of IPv4 fixes; things like NAT, etc. to keep our networks and applications running smoothly and things are getting more than a tad desperate. If you’ve read some of my past blog posts, you already know that the IANA is going to run out of addresses to handout to ISP’s by September, 2011 And you know that my personal stance on the matter is that all networks, applications and companies are already years behind where they should be in preparation for this great migration. The thing is, I’m just not a lone voice in the wilderness anymore.

Right now, those companies fully grasping the fact that IPv6 is what they’re going to require to power their businesses and remain competitive aren’t simply creating IPv6 networks and servers on the Internet, they’re also creating a “Whitelist” of customers who can access their web sites via the IPv6 routed protocol. So far, from what I can tell, the hardest driving companies leading this new Whitelist movement are: Google, Facebook, eBay, Yahoo, Comcast, Netflix, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Twitter. Doesn’t www.ipv6.netflix.com have a nice ring to it? (Yes, that’s really their new address!) Tell me you just didn’t try this link with your IPv4 network….of course you did…

So the burning question here is why do these companies need a “Whitelist”? Okay, that, and what happened to my invitation? Did it get stuck in my Junk mail filter again? Hmmm… To begin to answer that one, first, understand that IPv6 uses something called quad-A records (AAAA) instead of single A records like IPv4 queries. The DNS Whitelist for IPv6 would be used by content providers to pass quad-A records upstream to ISPs only if the user’s DNS resolver is in the Whitelist.

Okay, so back to my question on why these companies need a Whitelist… I mean, come on, if I get a /48 IPv6 address range from my ISP, why shouldn’t I just be able to use it? After all, this is a free country right? Well, most would say yes, but well, don’t you think that maybe, just maybe, this Whitelist could be used to maintain who accesses what, when, and where one can connect, as well as to control, monitor and log their access? It is definitely plausible, but of course Google, or anyone else wouldn’t go there, and Facebook would never ever really hold on to your deleted content or sell demographic info to mass marketing firms right?

Sort it out for yourself… Here’s what some content providers said when asked why they needed to create a DNS Whitelist of who can and cannot use their servers… I quote from Hurricane: “Without a whitelist to help sort out which customers can and cannot receive IPv6 content, web developers will inadvertently block too many customers from accessing their content.” And here’s a quote from eBay… When asked about their new IPv6 site, they said, “we need to take the precautions necessary to ensure our community has a safe experience on the site”. Google chimed in with: “This [Whitelist] is the easiest way we can provide IPv6 services without blocking customers with broken IPv6 links.”

Broken links? Safe experience? Blocking content? Let’s see… We haven’t even built the links yet, so how do they know that they can or will be blocked and/or broken? Of course we want them to be safe sites but then again, maybe Hurricane Electric wants control of all of your IPv6 data too. One does not necessarily preclude the next and let’s be honest, there’s some potentially serious coin and power there!

Plus, consider that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. has been gradually increasing our tolerance for less privacy at the cost of “connecting” by turning up the heat ever so slowly so that we’ve become accustomed to what we would’ve deemed totally invasive only a few years ago; accepting it as the “new normal” like proverbial slow-boiled frogs. You could say that I’m probably just being paranoid, but you would still have the Whitelist Dilemma” to deal with, cognitive dissonance and all.

With that said, what are we going to do about this Whitelist thing? Nothing, nada, zip, zero, zilch—not even a pathetic percentage of something—that’s what. Why? Because we haven’t just steadily grown accustomed to these services, we’ve grown so completely dependent upon using them that they’ve become actual verbs. Go ahead, see for yourself… see if you can get through one day around other people without hearing something like, “Oh, just google it and find out”, “email me” or “did you tweet back?”

No, we will not collectively go without YouTube, Search, Docs, Gmail, Twitter, News, and Maps in 2011, we will happily go along like lambs to the slaughter because they’re all free and what’s more, we’ve already cut over our corporate services to them. Uh-oh… Still think I’m being paranoid? Looks like you’re going to have to be on Google’s “Whitelist” after all! Wait, what? You thought that with Google, everything is free, fast, and large? Oh, right, as long as you’re in the Whitelist club so they know who you are, what you access and when—and then charge you for it…Oops… Scratch that. I meant, so they can verify that your networks aren’t screwed up somewhere, that you can access the content you’re really after, and that doing so will be a very pleasant, safe experience for you, indeed!

Let’s dive deeper for a second. Since these networks will be dual-stacked, at least for another 5-6 years, what’s the worst possible thing that can happen if an ISP has a broken IPv6 tunnel? You guessed it…nothing. Well, mostly nothing. Users will simply experience about a 30 to 60 second delay as the data is finally retuned using the IPv4 protocol. Admit it… If you’re at Google’s site and everything is delayed a minute, you will not like it one bit.  And if it happens a lot, you’ll most likely make some noise and complain.

This smoothly segues into another reason that strengthens the case for their Whitelist. “We’re doing this for you – to help ensure your networks are running optimally at peak performance… No more wasting time frustrated and waiting!”

To say this is controversial is laughably understated. How in the world (pun intended) will the ISP’s be able to maintain this list? I mean, the claim that there’s one link/tunnel/DNS record somewhere between you and them cannot be right because that would mean that you won’t gain access to their server until that link, etc. is fixed—and this is for your own good. Somehow. In fact, this is so important that the IETF, (group responsible for IPv6 and IPv4 protocols), is meeting specifically about this very same Whitelist.

Oh, and one last thought before this blog becomes a novella… The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will need to approve hardware and software products being developed and sold to government agencies by July 1^st 2010. YES—that would be July, as in a little less than three months from now, and there are around 150 RFC’s that must be refined and met before the NIST approves the lucky vendor.

Understand that this is no Y2K. It’s more like Brave New World meets 1984…

Cheers!

I just don’t usually go on and on and blog about the same subject three times because obsessing is something we should all avoid. I hate being bored and don’t want you to be either. Especially when it comes to talking about technology — you know I like to mix it up and keep it interesting, right? The thing is, lately it seems like everyone has been shooting me chatter about this subject and it would be wrong to ignore that. Plus, something new and cool has popped up that justifies a three-blog post. Actually, if things keep going the way they are with the IPv4 addressing scheme, I’m pretty sure I’ll need to shout out a part IV before the end of summer.

The last time I wrote about the IPv4 address-exhaustion issue we had about 10% left — maybe just under that — of all potential IPv4 addresses available for allocation to customers from the IANA, RIPE and the RIR.  Now we have less than 8%, and only twenty-two /8’s available, meaning that the clock is now majorly ticking. The new IPv4 allocation Doomsday is actually estimated to be as close as September 20th, 2011 — a mere 573 days from now!

Not to be Davey Downer, but what I’m getting at here is that the Doomsday date keeps getting moved up faster than Antarctica can ditch parts, which strongly suggests that we could all be hearing about it on CNN & BBC as early as late 2010! Don’t believe me? People, here’s this year’s first news story on the subject, published Jan 20th, 2010 as a release to the media by the Number Resource Organization:

“The Number Resource Organization (NRO), the official representative of the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) that oversee the allocation of all Internet number resources, announced today that less than 10% of available IPv4 addresses remain unallocated. This small pool of existing IP addresses marks a critical moment in IPv4 address exhaustion, ultimately impacting the future network operations of all businesses and organizations around the globe.* “This is a key milestone in the growth and development of the global Internet,” noted Axel Pawlik, Chairman of the NRO. “With less than 10 percent of the entire IPv4 address range still available for allocation to RIRs, it is vital that the Internet community take considered and determined action to ensure the global adoption of IPv6,”* said Mr Pawlik.

With so few IPv4 addresses remaining, APNIC and the NRO is urging all Internet stakeholders to take immediate action by planning for the necessary investments required to deploy IPv6.”

Oh wait, that’s not all… Here’s another upbeat little link quietly announced in January that probably totally passed you by unless you’ve been following this issue like a stalker. IANA, the organization that coordinates global IP addressing, allocated the previously unallocated and distinctive, 1.0.0.0/8 block to APNIC. Take a look at this nice little link BTW… Props for this Intel go out to Marcus, A.K.A. “Big Evil” on my forum, who is very cool and definitely not a stalker—Thanks bro!

So what’s up with that? Were the folks at IANA checking out my blog posts, which lead them to the epiphany, “oh my, we’d better stop holding out all these unallocated addresses, listen to Todd and give up that conspicuous 1.0.0.0/8 class-A block never before used in the public Internet?” Okay, I’m guessin’ a big no on that one, but it’s just really interesting to me… That big ol’ block just was heretofore just sitting there at the top of the list, “UNALLOCATED”—until now, that is! Why? Kind of rhetorical at this juncture because if this three blog series about our ugly IPv4 address-exhaustion problem hasn’t already made you wake up screaming, “I must begin deploying IPv6 products and services, and get some solid IPv6 training now”, then, well, nothing will. Yes of course you can just cover your eyes and hope all of this isn’t really happening, but if that’s you, it’s seriously time for you to start training in a different sector.

That’s it for this update except for one last thing… check out http://www.globalnettraining.com/ for some really sweet specials, and the best and only Todd Lammle Cisco Authorized training.

Cheers!
Todd Lammle

Salaries for the Cisco certifications held by respondents to this year’s survey decreased from 2009, but they were still higher than the average salaries for Cisco-certified folks in 2008. The average salary of $93,953 for a Cisco Certified Design Associate was the sixth highest salary listed in this year’s survey, and is still a 25% increase from a CCDA’s average salary of $75,000 in 2008.

The second highest Cisco certification salary in this year’s survey ($89,864) was for the Cisco Certified Network Professional designation. Cisco this month announced a major overhaul of this certification by replacing the required exams with those that better reflect a network professional’s job tasks. After July 31, candidates are required to take exams that cover implementing Cisco IP routing, implementing Cisco switched networks, and troubleshooting and maintaining Cisco IP networks. (More information about the changes is available at Cisco’s CCNP site).

Cisco finally has announced what we’ve known was coming for about 6 months or so….an update to the CCNP Exams available starting March 10th, 2010. The new exams are simply called ROUTE, SWITCH, TSHOOT, with the latter not available until April 30th. So, if you’re working on your CCNP, you have until July 31st to finish using the old exams: BSCI, BSMSN, ONT and ISCW. The new CCNP offers a nice, new path for Cisco CCNA® certified network engineer and will provide you with a solid foundation for those interested in the Cisco CCIE® R&S.

There are two nice benefits about the latest exams: you’ll spend only $450 instead of $600 to get your CCNP (we’ll see how long that lasts), and you now get 120 minutes instead of just 90 to complete them.

Cisco has provided four various paths to achieve your CCNP, depending upon how far along you presently are with your CCNP Studies and exams. You can find the page describing each of those four paths here.

There are some interesting changes in the courses that will definitely affect the way that I’ll be teaching the 12-day bootcamp. First, the ROUTE and TSHOOT courses have some very cool e-learning lessons that you can only get from a Cisco Authorized training company. This means that if you do not go to an authorized bootcamp or class, you will not get said e-learning modules and yes—the information in them is absolutely vital to meeting the exam objectives! I’ve always wondered about people who claim they’ve passed the exam by just reading a book or using brain dumps, but now, I no longer will. In the new Cisco World, without attending an authorized course, getting the information required to pass will be next to impossible without doing something really shady—something that honest people with well, brains will realize is just not worth the risk. Cisco is not known to be the least bit forgiving of ill-gotten certifications! I am not saying you can’t self-study, it just seems that Cisco is making it harder to do so. Inside the Cisco Authorized kits will be a CD that allows access to the all-so-important material. So, how can we pass these exams without the new curriculum? Beats me.

Okay—that said, the ROUTE part of the CCNP provides you with information and labs on how to plan, configure, and verify the implementation of complex enterprise LAN and WAN routing solutions, using a range of routing protocols and securing routing solutions to support branch offices and mobile workers. There are more than 7 hours of extended e-learning outside of the classroom needed to meet the exam objectives.

The SWITCH part of the CCNP gives you with information and labs on how to plan, configure, and verify the implementation of complex enterprise switching solutions, using Cisco Enterprise Campus Architecture. The exam objectives also cover securing integration of VLANs, WLANs, voice, and video into campus networks with switches.

Lastly, The TSHOOT part of the CCNP supplies you with the information and labs on how to plan and perform regular maintenance on complex enterprise routed and switched networks, plus use technology-based practices and a systematic ITIL-compliant approach to successfully pull off complex network troubleshooting. I’m really interested to see what Cisco will use from ITIL in this exam. BTW… This course is all hands-on labs and has 9 hours of extended e-learning lessons.

With all this in mind, I really can’t say the CCNP will become any easier to attain, that’s for sure. The writing on the wall is that it’s going to be harder to instruct the course effectively and harder for the students to pass the exams unless they have some serious study and hands-on lab time. So if you are trying to finish your CCNP or wanting to get your CCNP, you’d better get with it. The bar is seriously rising soon!

Cisco has video information regarding these CCNP updates found here.

While we’re all waiting with baited breath for the new exams to be available so we can finally get the skinny about what’s going on, be sure and check out www.globalnettraining.com for some sweet New Years’ special offers from the only place that delivers the highest quality Todd Lammle Cisco Authorized training!

Cheers!
Todd Lammle

Taking off from where I left off last month….There are < 10% of the reserved blocks from IANA left to allocate, which means there is only about twenty-six 256 blocks. At this rate, the allocation of all addresses will happen on September 23, 2011. This is actually 17 extra days then I reported last month.

But wait- that’s only about 626 days from now….and when I wrote my last blog around Thanksgiving, 30 more days have passed- time is running out quick.

Also remember in my last blog I told you that a new RIR policy was created in 2008 that tells the IANA “When you’ve just allocated the last of six /8 network blocks, give us the remaining five unallocated network blocks!”, so right now we only have nineteen more block to hand out before this happens!

Looking back, It would have been helpful if the original designers didn’t reserve so many addresses to begin with when allocating IPv4 addresses. Here is the breakdown (remember that each /8 represent 16,777,216 addresses!):

• Sixteen /8’s for multicast use. This is probably the most useful reserved address space, but this is still more reserved addresses than are typically used.
• Sixteen /8’s for some unspecified “future use” that never happened…
• One /8 for local identification (0.0.0.0). Cisco had also reserved this range for router broadcast use that never happened.
• One /8 block for private use (10.0.0.0/8) – this one is actually helpful, and not too wasteful at all.
• And here’s a head scratcher for you…14.0.0.0/8…Something about public data networks, but I’ve never seen this used, and we never will either.

• And let’s just end with my personal favorite: 127.0.0.1/8. Now who was the genius that thought of this beauty? 16 million+ addresses wasted just to test your local IP stack. Nice.

• And the addresses ranges from 240.0.0.0 on up are reserved as well in RFC 3330 for some future use that we’ll never see as well.

Now I am no math genius, but if you take all those /8 addresses reserved (not counting the 240 through 255 addresses, which is a lot more addresses!) and if you multiple them by 16,777,216…well, now that’s a lot of reserved addresses. 603,979,776 to be exact, and considering that we only have about 318 million address left to allocate (to IANA & RIPE) worldwide – for the rest of our lives – this just shows how wasteful the designers of the first RFC’s were. And just as another reminder: we need about 190 million new addresses a year – and that is in this bad economy too. What happens if we get another rebound in the economy worldwide?

Sooner or later the unallocated address pools will run out for each RIR which means that life of an IPv4 network will be harder and harder to maintain, and certainly more expensive! Just try and buy some /28 or /29 addresses for your small company or home business and see how much the prices have already sky rocketed!

If this exhaustion problem hasn’t already made you very aware that you need to start deploying IPv6 products and services as soon as possible, then nothing will change your mind at this point.
So, what are your options? If you are an IT professional, get in an IPv6 class and just start learning some basics. If you are running a routed network, put together a test bed of routers running dual-stack routing and get some hands-on experience.

As for Cisco, my CCNP certification class is doing more and more IPv6 configurations every month now, and I have heard that Cisco is going to go even deeper into IPv6 even at the CCNA level. So at a minimum, get a book and start reading up on IPv6…it is in your future!

In the meantime, be sure and check out www.globalnettraining.com for some end of year specials and where you’ll find the best and only Todd Lammle Cisco Authorized training!

Cheers!
Todd Lammle

Want to read something startling to wake you up today? Here it is:

Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 06-Sep-2011

Projected RIR Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 29-Aug-2012

Or to put it another way – that’s only about 643 days from now….

Let me start at the beginning for a minute…the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet protocol resources and provides these resources to the Regional Internet Registry’s (RIR) who, in turn, delegates resources to their customers, which include ISP’s and end-user organizations.

Sure, there are a few other steps & details, but you can get the general idea that everything starts with IANA, and basically ends with RIR’s decisions on how to allocate the last remaining IP addresses. IANA’s IPv4 exhaustion has been predicted by scientists for decades so let’s just skip back to just the last six years….

In 2003, after the .com boom had already went “boom”, some various scientists predicted we had until about 2021 before we had anything to really worry about in our corporate or home based networks, which for them, would be long after these “scientist geniuses” were retired, or more likely dead (thanks mostly in part to PAT… [I mean thanks to PAT that we would still have IP addresses unallocated, not that the scientists are dead]).

However, a new study in the spring of 2008 shows that we have less than 10% of reserved unallocated addresses available and that we’re going to be lucky to even get to 2012 with our current IPv4 addresses in place, and we’ll start seeing address allocation problems occurring within the next year!

But what has created this massive address exodus from IANA in the last few years and how will it affect me?

First, I have to make some basic assumptions in this blog since I am not sure that anyone understands the exact question that I am trying to answer, because figuring out the IANA allocation amount and how fast it is being depleted is much like playing in the stock market. However, by assuming that 2010’s growth will be much like 2008 and 2009, we can just do the math based on the last year and a half.

This just seems like a good idea on where and how the prediction of when the unallocated IPv4 address will run out….or you can stop reading now and just keep believing what you are probably thinking…”That this is someone else’s problem” ….and you can just keep ignoring the problem, at least for another 643 days, give or take a few days.

But to answer the question about what is creating this problem in the first place, we have to understand what the world needs, and to quickly put things into perspective, the world needs IP addresses more than the U.S. needs oil. To be even more exact, at the end of 2003 the address consumption rate was about 64 million a year, and at the end of 2009 it is believed to be 192 million per year, which gives us about two more years before the IANA starts getting Social Security.

With all this in mind, understand that a new RIR policy was created in 2008 that tells the IANA “When you’ve just allocated the last of six /8 network blocks, give us the remaining five unallocated network blocks!”, which means the demise of the IANA forever. Wow, now there’s something to contemplate. It is very possible that IANA was both created and retired in your lifetime, and what a history it created!

Be sure and stop by next week and get up-to-the-minute updates on the depletion of the IPv4 unallocated address space. In the meantime, be sure and check out www.globalnettraining.com for some end of year specials and where you’ll find the best and only Todd Lammle Cisco Authorized training!

Cheers!
Todd Lammle