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We currently have a range of 12 static IP addresses through our ISP that I believe are leased. Now that the IPv4 space is almost gone, should I be worried that our ISP (it's a Time Warner fiber connection) will want to pull these back or in some other way charge us a lot of money to keep them?

If so, what I can do right now to make sure we don't have problems here down the road?

Joel Coel
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4 Answers4

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This would be kind of silly in the early stages of constrained IPs. 12 usable IPs will fit in a /28 block. Each time we go down in subnets (28,27,26) etc we are talking about exponential growth:

/27 32
/26 64
/25 128
/24 256
/23 512
/22 1024
/21 2048
/20 4096
/19 8192
/18 16,384
/17 32,768
/16 65,536
/15 131,072
/14 262,144
/13 524,288
...
/8 16,777,216

The pressure I think will start to come from IANA, and they will probably look at smaller institutions like universites with large blocks instead of telecom providers (I am only guessing).

So in other words, you are small potatoes.

Kyle Brandt
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  • Indeed. Those of us with /16's passed down in antiquity are the ones who'll get politely asked once RIRs start feeling the pinch. – sysadmin1138 Jan 07 '11 at 19:15
  • So you don't see the likes of Time Warner having difficulty finding enough addresses to serve their residential customers, needing to find an alternate, and not having anywhere else to look? I find it less likely they might charge me more or remove my addresses, but they might want to put them behind some kind of carrier-grade NAT – Joel Coel Jan 07 '11 at 23:01
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We currently have a range of 12 static IP addresses through our ISP that I believe are leased.

No, they are assigned as per IANA / RIPE / whoever is your registry guidelines.

If so, what I can do right now to make sure we don't have problems here down the road?

Use them. Read your contract terms. Switch over to Ipv6 with as much as you can as soon as you can.

TomTom
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    I'm not sure making the switch to IpV6 is the right answer. – DanBig Jan 07 '11 at 18:42
  • By "Switch over to Ipv6", of course you mean implementing it side-to-side with IPv4, right? :) – l0c0b0x Jan 07 '11 at 18:44
  • No. Don't tell me your provider does not offer you IPv6 already? Ok for end users, but commercially? I got acomplete /56 assigned 1.5 years ago at my hoster JUST ASKING FOR IT. I start moving some stuff to Ipv6 now... like our internal network, DNS queries external etc. – TomTom Jan 07 '11 at 18:49
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    @Dan, correct me if I'm wrong, it's going to have to be done at some point, isn't it? – tombull89 Jan 07 '11 at 19:06
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I don't believe this is going to be a problem for end users for a while, yet. As I understand it, IANA will run out of /8s in a few months' time, but it'll be a while yet before this filters down through the RIRs to the end users and If any recovery measures are instigated, then I expect the first targets will be the early adopters with their own class As.

But still, Ditto what TomTom said. IPv6 still gives me the willies, but I'll have to bite the bullet sooner or later.

SmallClanger
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As this question shows up now and then:

The strategy of the IANA/RIRs is to switch over to IPv6, not to try to extend the pain of IPv4. There is no other path. It is not considered worthwhile to try to recover assigned networks (unless they are not being announced/used). The amount of work required to renumber a large scale network is considerable, and even if we get a /8 lose we win less than a month. It's not worth it.

If your service provider starts to ask for lots of money for your IP addresses blaming the crunch you should get the hell out of there. Choose a serious service provider instead of one trying to skin you.

pehrs
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  • I'm not worried about IANA - I'm worried about Time Warner not being able to have enough addresses to serve it's residential customers, needing to find an alternate, and not having anywhere else to look. And I find it less likely they might charge me more or remove them, but they might want to put them behind some kind of carrier-grade NAT. – Joel Coel Jan 07 '11 at 22:59
  • Time Warner is unlikely to be hit by the crunch early (being large, not growing fast and primarily in America). By the time they are hit by an IPv4 crunch you should already have changed to IPv6. – pehrs Jan 07 '11 at 23:49