IPv6 Transition Seen May Need National Laws as Soon as 2008, Official Says
SAN JOSE -- Action by governments as soon as 2008 likely will be needed to address coming exhaustion of Internet Protocol addresses, the North American address authority’s chairman said Tuesday. China, Japan, South Korea and other states already are encouraging the inevitable but tricky shift to IPv6, said John Curran, chairman of the American Registry for Internet Numbers. The best estimate for exhaustion of the inventory of regional authorities like ARIN is March 2011, but that’s a moving target. It’s too early for action by the U.S., which prefers to wait for requests based on industry consensus, Curran told an ISPCon presentation.
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“We probably will in the next year… see legislation to force the issue,” Curran said. “But it’s not a U.S. issue. It’s a global issue.” Action will require officials to see that the problem imminently threatens their economies, he said. IPv6 is a tough sell for voluntary action, since “there is real work” to the switch. Despite sales pitches to the contrary, it “poses no real benefit” besides a vast new supply of addresses, Curran said. ARIN’s Latin American counterpart has set Jan. 1, 2011, as the deadline for mandatory IPv6 support, he said. That’s a good “planning point,” but IPv4 addresses might run out before then, Curran said.
The 13 proposals weighed this week at ARIN’s meeting in Albuquerque include some on how to handle IPv4 addresses allocated but unused, Curran said. Up for preliminary consideration, they would let the addresses be transferred by holders or reclaimed for reassignment, he said. Recirculating addresses would delay exhaustion to 2015 or 2017, Curran said. There’s “nothing like a deadline that moves to unnerve policy.” Users would be well-advised to test their switches, rather than trying to do them at the last minute, due to the chance of glitches, he said.
Seventy percent of IPv4 addresses are allocated and 13 percent more are reserved and permanently unavailable, Curran said. As the IPv4 address supply dwindles, new Internet users increasingly will be assigned IPv6 addresses. That will render them unable to communicate with users who have only IPv4 addresses except through flawed work-arounds like Network Address Translation, he said.
Users can run both kinds of address so they can “talk” with everyone online. However, required systems work is at the expense of each server operator, he said. A business may not feel enough pain -- from missing out on IPv6-only customers, say, or an e-mail from an IPv6-only investor -- to make the move for years, Curran said. Even now, some users who could use IPv4 are going IPv6-only to nudge the transition along, he said.
“This is a significant migration,” Curran said. “It is not a transparent migration… When the Internet decides to go from 32 bits” in IPv4 addresses “to 128 bits, every system on the public Internet is going to need to be” upgraded. It’s the biggest adjustment in communications looming for any industry the next 20 years, he said.
The burden -- and inertia -- are mainly with institutional Internet users, including large corporations, other content providers and ISPs apart from the big ones, said Curran. Providers like Verizon Business, Sprint and Global Crossing are offering IPv6 service, he said: “The carriers are well ahead.” PCs are adaptable to the new IP version, and cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 standard supports it, Curran said “I'm not worried about the last-mile problem, to be frank,” he said. “I'm worried about the last 10 feet problem.”