IPv4 address space - running out...

[john_p]

This is interesting:
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space...

when we are faced with soon running out of IPv4 address space, why do:

General Electric Company
Hewlett-Packard Company
Xerox Corporation
Ford Motor Company
Prudential Securities Inc.
Halliburton Company
UK Government Department for Work and Pensions
US Postal Service

all require a staggering 16 MILLION IP addresses each?

Why don't they give some back so we can all enjoy some IPv4 for a few years more ?

[randlemarcus]

Given that, generally speaking, allowing inbound traffic is not a Good Thing for most users, and workstations, IPv4 is safe for a while.

[lestag]

john_p said:

This is interesting:
http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space...

when we are faced with soon running out of IPv4 address space, why do:

General Electric Company
Hewlett-Packard Company
Xerox Corporation
Ford Motor Company
Prudential Securities Inc.
Halliburton Company
UK Government Department for Work and Pensions
US Postal Service

all require a staggering 16 MILLION IP addresses each?

Why don't they give some back so we can all enjoy some IPv4 for a few years more ?

IIRC , they (all leasees) are licenced to use those ranges. They dont own them and could be revoked. Of course in the US it would be hard as the businesses would probably litigate the hand back, taking years/decades.

Also realise, it is not a trivial task for those organisations to do and expensive to redo your routing, subnets and ip address allocations.
Techinally, there may be applications thay run that do not support NAT tranversal accross their external facing firewalls. NAT transalation on firewalls managing that sort of organisation would likely provide a significant load on the firewalls, which may require upgrades or a different architecture.

[TonyRPH]

I used to work for a smallish company (1200 employees) who have a Class B assigned to them.

Ironically, this IP range was used *internally*.

I tried to force a switch to something from the RFC1918 address range whilst I was there, but to no avail.

[andy-xr]

IPv6 support in a lot of technology already, more over the next 6 months

[gamefreaks]

Yes,

I worked on a project for one of the companies listed above.

Anyway, we were just configuring the PLC's and HMI's ready for delivery and installation. We asked them to assign us some IP addresses.

They came beck with a block of 20 or so IP's in the 30.x.x.x range (Well an external range anyway!). Err...this stuff isn't facing the internet is it?? No they replyed, thats on our factory network!

But they were given these addresses long before it was even plausable that we could run out of ipv4 addresses.