The day the Internet broke

According to The Telegraph the Internet had a 'wobble' on Tuesday as Verizon clawed back some IP addresses.

The day the internet broke - Telegraph Blogs

Of course the Internet has been running out of IP addresses for some time but now we are running out of sticking plasters.

The last time this was a major problem along came NAT/PAT to resolve the issue. Address translation allows multiple devices to sit behind a router with a single public IP and all access the Internet transparently. It fixed the problem for business who would, typically, have hundreds of devices each with a public IP. Use of NAT/PAT reduced the requirement to just one. Internally, the devices had private IP addresses which are not visible to the Internet.

Later, NAT/PAT fixed the problem for households where, originally, there was a single computer that everyone used. The upsurge in laptops and netbooks often meant everyone in the family had a computer of their own but this had no effect on IP address usage.

Today though, the upsurge is in mobile devices with roaming Internet connections using technologies such as 4G each of which require a public IP. While many mobile devices support IPv6 a lot of the Internet has older technology which either doesn't or has other limitations such as described in the article linked.

There has been a fair amount of resistance to upgrading to IPv6 on the grounds of cost mainly but I reckon the issue will soon be forced. IPv4 allows around 4 billion simultaneous users which is about where we are. Without some serious investment super-fast fibre will be returning speeds more akin to dial-up.

What a horrifying thought!

It might be interesting to see how people under the age of 30 could cope without the internet. I think many would just panic and lock themselves away in a dark room.

Hopefully though others would be forced to look up and see that there's a big world out there, rather than wandering blindly through life staring at a tiny handheld screen in front of them.

I don't know about under 30...i would not know what to do..it would be me in the cupboard

Going to be a pain working from home without internet or even doing my job.

The break on Tuesday was a by-product of running out address situation. The real answer is to implement IP6 but god knows how many breakages that is going to cause or how much its going to cause. All those router with the 512k BGP limit are almost certainly going to be need replacing.