[kictanet] Liquid Telecom warns of looming address shortage - Daily Nation

[Tony White]

Ali,

Short answer: IPv6 is better for clients: our ISPs should all agree to
begin allocating IPv6 subnets to clients.

TL;DR:

IPv6 is not compatible with IPv4, but all modern software is IPv6
capable - ie. software implementing IPv6 stacks is incorporated in
both end-user (PCs, tablets, phones, etc.) and network devices
(routers, switches, etc.) - so a transition to IPv6 should be
relatively painless - indeed, even easier than IPv4 as the 'tricks' we
use to extend IPv4 space, such as NAT, are no longer required.  DHCP
is also (almost) redundant as the 128 bits of IPv6 addressing neatly
divides into 2 blocks of 64 bits - the first block of 64 bits
describing the subnet (which is allocated to the client by the ISP),
and the second block of 64 bits is the host address space available to
the client - which, by not much coincidence, is the size of the MAC
address space. Phew! - what this means is that a device (PC, etc.)
IPv6 host address can be it's MAC address - no DHCP or ARP requests
required ;)

So where's the problem? - Well, as the majority of the 'rest of the
internet' is still operating on IPv4 addressing, the ISP (or their
upstream) may need to implement IPv6 to IPv4 translation - and this is
not so simple: if the 'other end' is also an IPv6 address, but there
is no direct IPv6 route between the two, then an IPv6 to IPv4 'tunnel'
is needed to transfer the IPv6 packets through an IPv4 routing.  If
the 'other end' is only an IPv4 address, then the ISP needs to use
NAT64 (and other mechanisms) to translate between the two different
addressing schemes.

Some numbers: 128 bits, split into 2 groups of 64 bits, is
approximately 18,446,744,073,709,600,000 IPv6 subnet prefixes, and
18,446,744,073,709,600,000 hosts per subnet.

So to reiterate the short answer - IPv6 is a good thing for clients,
but introduces some challenges for ISPs.

Thanks for waking up my brain this fine Monday morning ;)
Cheers,
Tony



On 10/10/2016, Ali Hussein via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
> Dear listers
>
> Greetings and apologies for cross-posting.
>
> Internet service provider Liquid Telecom Kenya has warned that Africa is
> set to run out of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses as early as next year,
> potentially slowing down digital growth in the continent.
>
> Read on:-
>
> http://www.nation.co.ke/business/Liquid-Telecom-warns-of-looming-address-shortage/996-3410850-format-xhtml-aub5sm/index.html
>
> Couple of questions:-
>
> 1. How involved are we as a community in ensuring the smooth transition
> from IPV4 to IPV6?
>
> 2. What have been the major impediments to the successful migration?
>
> 3. How can we move the needle faster?
>
> Ali Hussein
> Tel: +254 713 601113
>


-- 
Tony White