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back to article Sheffield ISP: You don't need a whole IPv4 address to yourself, right?

Facing the shortage of IPv4 addresses, and glacial adoption of IPv6, UK ISP PlusNet is looking for volunteers among its customers to test out sharing the IPv4 addresses on its network. The technique being tested by PlusNet uses a NAT (Network Address Translator) to share a single internet-facing IP address between multiple …

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    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Meh

      > "The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone and almost everything is available in the (better secured) cloud these days"

      I still do and after ten years I prefer to think of 'a machine I own locked in my spare bedroom' as more secure than something hosted by a large corporation that sees me (and possibly my personal data) as a cash cow or an ISP that makes no money off the service. I'm not sure about the uptime. I've lost mine for a day four times in the last 12 years (always during the week and always after I've left for work). How would a cloud service compare with that?

      Anyway I think this service has merit for the average user. More support for IPv6 would be better though. My ISP supports it - IDNet - but sadly my nine month old NetGear WNR1000v3 doesn't. Or at least not the UK firmware. Apparently there's a firmware version somewhere that does give or a take a few bugs.

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      1. John Sager
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        I guess Plusnet would at least have considered using NAT64, except that most wireless routers don't support it, and probably don't even have a firmware upgrade to do so. NAT64 still has the NAT-specific drawbacks that v4 NAT has, but at least it would make the home network IPv6 by default. Perhaps as home wireless routers become capable of IPv6 they could start to run NAT64 in parallel.

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    2. Jason Bloomberg Silver badge
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      @M7S - Connected households

      Surely with all these future connected households we hear about, where one can start the bath running whilst still travelling home valid connections will be a requirement?

      You can have the home-side systems push status to the cloud, ask if it's meant to do something and do it, so your direct interaction is with the cloud not your home, your home is always polling and making outward connections rather than accepting incoming connections.

      There are disadvantages to polling but it's likely to work for most homes for most things which don't need instantaneous interaction. Response times can be reduced at the cost of more frequent polling and greater bandwidth use and it can be dynamically adjusted.

      Most residential customers probably don't get a static IPv4 anyway so that model id going to be adopted to allow an internet of things to work before everyone is on IPv6. That seems to be what Electric Imp is doing.

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    3. Ken Hagan Gold badge
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      that "better secured cloud" in more detail...

      Perhaps the killer app for IPv6 is an appliance (quite possibly built into the domestic router) that lets you run your own cloud. You do the backups. You determine the privacy policy. No-one turns round a couple of years later and says "all your stuff belongs to us next month unless you find (and migrate to) a new provider".

      It needn't be expensive. You need a disc large to store your crap on, something large enough to backup to, and a router capable of taking the "load" of your immediate family and friends all rushing for the baby video at once. An off-the shelf router with a couple of SD cards would probably be sufficient for most households. The only problem is installing, configuring and maintaining the software stack.

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    4. Roland6 Silver badge
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      I'd like to run my own mail server,

      >You are in the minority of domestic broadband users

      > and intend in future to have things like the ability to check home cctv, respond to callers at the entryphone (fitted with IP camera) etc from my smartphone. Surely with all these future connected households we hear about, where one can start the bath running whilst still travelling home valid connections will be a requirement?

      Simple you just have an agent out in the cloud to which both your home and remote systems connect; this is the way LogMeIn and other similar services work. This also means that your home can use a dynamic IP address, who's actual value at any particular time isn't something you need to worry about.

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  2. Thomas Whipp

    Privacy issue

    From a "Police" perspective this would probably require PlusNet to retain a lot more logging information. At present for general network access all they would need to do is log which IP is assigned, under a NAT arrangement they would need to log individual mappings as just knowing someones private IP wouldnt be any use when asked who connected to dodgy site X.

    I know there has been a significant uplift in logging over the last few years - but this does feel like it would be another step up.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Privacy issue

      total nonsense

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Privacy issue

      The destination IP logging etc would be done at the point where an end user's traffic still had a unique IP address - probably one of the "local" ones. That could either be a dynamic lease or a "permanent" reserved one. The final PlusNet NAT would then multiplex several users onto an external IP address - wasn't that called PAT? There's no limit to how many times a connection gets NAT/PAT manipulations. All that matters is there is no ambiguity of "local" IP address routing in the various stages.

      In fact I presumed that's what ISPs already did for "economy" users - it is certainly what large organisation's intranets do.

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    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Privacy issue

      Logging requirements on the ISP side aren't as bad as you think, the ISP could always NAT a certain user to a certain IP and port range, or at least allocate a block of ports on-demand and log the block allocation rather than individual connection mappings. This also reduces accuracy requirements on timestamps which is also pretty much necessary otherwise it is going to be difficult to correlate logs between different organisations; not everyone has accurate timekeeping.

      Logging requirements on the server side are likely to be more troublesome. Logs for *many* service daemons (think: typical web server, etc) only record source IP addresses, not source port numbers, so correctly reporting abuse to ISPs is going to be difficult. In some cases it is going to be easier for server operators to run IPv6 than change logging to also record port numbers...

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  3. Crisp

    When the government can't track down an individual twitter user

    You can bet that we'll be moving to IPv6 pretty sharpish.

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    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
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      Re: When the government can't track down an individual twitter user

      > You can bet that we'll be moving to IPv6 pretty sharpish.

      The fun thing there is that with IPv6 you can probably get a new address before every tweet. Good luck tracking that!

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      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: When the government can't track down an individual twitter user

        "The fun thing there is that with IPv6 you can probably get a new address before every tweet."

        The intention with IPv6 is that every device gets its own unique, permanent IPv6 address. IIRC it is usually a compound of the ethernet MAC address and a user's prefix. Mobile traffic is probably also carried in IPv6 tunnels that allow location changes without the device's basic IPv6 address changing.

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        1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
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          Re: When the government can't track down an individual twitter user

          Well, of course that's the intention, but that was also the intention with IPv4 and it didn't take long for anonymizing services to popup. IPv6 will make that even easier, you'll be looking for a sand grain on a beach instead of a needle in a haystack!

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        2. Vic
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          Re: When the government can't track down an individual twitter user

          > IIRC it is usually a compound of the ethernet MAC address and a user's prefix

          No, that's just the link-local stuff, and is just a recommendation, not a requirement.

          Externally-visible IPv6 addresses can be whatever you like within your allocation - and for servers, using the MAC address would be an extraordinarily bad thing to do[1].

          Vic.

          [1] It makes replacing a failed network interface rather tricky, for example...

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  4. El Presidente
    WTF?

    The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone

    Oh? Really?

    I have a static IP and, soon, will have 10 or 12Mb/s upstream.

    I'm planning to save myself a lot of money I now pay to hosting companies by running my own .. servers.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone

      Look at your electricity bill and how long servers last in a home environment - you won't be saving money. Hosting in a datacenter has numerous advantages AND works out cheaper.

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      1. El Presidente
        Reply Icon
        Facepalm

        Re: The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone

        You've absolutely no idea how much I spend per annum on various web and mail hosting services so how you can tell me I won't save any money will have to remain a mystery to man and science, I suppose.

        Believe me, I've done the figures, I'm already paying for the fat pipe, I'll save enough money to have paid for the hardware by month 10 and be well in profit by month 12. Plus, my skill set will have improved.

        It's not all abut the money, is it?

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        1. Grogan Silver badge
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          Re: The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone

          Except that your links to the internet will be poor compared to a datacenter, that has routers from the major carriers right on their doorstep.

          You, on the other hand, with a residential or business connection intended for client use, will be behind much more infrastructure and have considerably more latency for clients connecting to you. Some clients may not be able to reach you at all.

          That's the reason why people have servers in professional datacenters. Running it from home, it will be hit or miss for clients, and you'll easily saturate that pipe you think is so fat. ISPs don't give you unmitigated 24/7 full duplex connections at your stated speeds. If you're just goofing around that's fine, but for any serious hosting with any traffic it's not viable.

          You will see, as many others have.

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          1. NullReference Exception
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            Thumb Up

            Re: The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone

            Who says it has to be for paying clients?

            Disks are cheap. RAM is cheap. Broadband is something you're paying for anyway, and even here in the United States of Verizon you can get halfway decent uplink speeds if you live in the right place. A DynDNS account costs five bucks a year. Buy a low-spec Dell PowerEdge or build the equivalent from parts from newegg, stuff it full of the aforementioned cheap disks and RAM, install your favorite VM solution and go to town. Run your own cloud backup for your family and friends. Run your own Exchange server and sync your phones without having to sell your soul to Google. Run BES, if you're a masochist. Run FreePBX or Elastix to get unified communications, also without having to sell your soul to Google. Do other stuff that you could never afford to pay for if you had to do it through a third party service provider. Then turn around and use everything you just learned in your day job.

            Take away the routable IP address and the Internet becomes a lot less fun, and a lot more like cable TV with five trillion channels and nothing on.

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            1. Grogan Silver badge
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              Re: The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone

              If this is in reply to me, I didn't mean paying clients. I meant it in context of "client and server". A client would simply be a visitor's web browser etc. Of course you can have a few clients connect for whatever reason. (e.g. filesharing)

              Try running a site like TheReg or even a forum with, say, even just a few hundred regular users on a home internet connection. You'll lose most of your membership because they will be frustrated.

              Also, if running your own mail services on an ISP connection, few will accept mail from you. You will have problems, regardless of having your MX records and everything in order.

              It's not that you can't do a lot of stuff yourself (like you describe) or that you can't host anything, I was just reacting to the notion that you don't need a datacenter when you have high speed internet at home. It's kind of deceiving if you don't know any better, one would think "12 mbit upstream" would be dandy but in reality other factors make it undesirable.

              It's certainly worth the $150 or so a month it costs me to have a server in a datacenter. I'd spend thousands a month to lease lines, and pay an upstream ISP to have viable hosting from home. (That's the point I'm stuck on)

              I guess I am way out of context because I am absolutely not saying I would want or even tolerate NAT from an ISP. I sometimes open ports for services when I have a specific reason to (e.g. I could pop open an ftp server right now if I wanted someone to get something from me directly). If faced with NAT, I would cancel the service so fast, and so nastily, that they would need counselling.

              NAT is for ME to do, with my one public facing IP address.

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      2. DJ Particle
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        Re: The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone

        Even if the server is a low-power Mac Mini that only moves files?

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      3. Vic
        Reply Icon

        Re: The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone

        > how long servers last in a home environment

        Mine have lasted many years so far..

        > you won't be saving money.

        That depends on what you're running.

        > Hosting in a datacenter has numerous advantages

        And several disadvantages. The "best" way to host your stuff depends on what stuff you want to host...

        Vic.

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  5. /dev/null
    WTF?

    "odd versions are experimental"

    Huh? There was no IPv1,2 or 3 - IPv4 was numbered to match the corresponding TCP protocol version (RFC793). TCP actually predated IP, (see RFC675) and hence was in its fourth version at the time.

    And IPv5 didn't really exist either - version 5 was used to distinguish IEN-119 ST stream protocol packets from IP packets. ST was not intended as a replacement for IPv4.

    I think someone might be getting mixed up with the old Linux kernel version numbering scheme...?

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    1. koolholio
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      Thumb Up

      Re: "odd versions are experimental"

      ipv4

      xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

      ipv6

      xxxx:xxx:*null*:xxxx:xx:xxxx

      UDP im sure was before the TCP handshake too! Along with IPX

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    2. bigdish
      Reply Icon
      Alert

      Re: "odd versions are experimental"

      According to IANA, who dish out IP version numbers...

      IPv5 was used for the ST Datagram mode protocol (which apparently went on to feed into the development of MPLS)

      IPv6 was originally allocated to an experimental version known as SIPP (Simple Internet Protocol Plus)

      IPv7 was assigned to the experimental TP/IX: The Next Internet, although the same version number was also used for a proposed version called CATNIP (Common Architecture for the Internet)

      IPv8 was assigned to the experimental PIP (The P Internet Protocol)

      IPv9 was assigned to the experimental TUBA (TCP/UDP with Bigger Addresses)

      So, all but two version numbers have so far been experimenatl (or just skipped) and the next version of IP will have to be IPv10...probably...

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  6. Phil W

    They're doing this backward...

    I think the sensible thing with this really would be to make it an opt out scheme, maybe even charge a small fee for static IPs.

    If necessary I'd pay say an extra £1-2 per month for a static IP, where as Joe Public who doesn't really know what a static IP is could get NAT'd and not notice or care.

    It also seems likely they'd free up a lot more IP addresses this way.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: They're doing this backward...

      doesn't matter at some stage there won;t be enough.

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      1. Phil W
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        Re: They're doing this backward...

        Indeed, it is a delaying action at best. But that's hardly a compelling argument against doing it.

        To argue otherwise is to also argue against fuel efficient cars because the oil will run out eventually anyway.

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    2. Shonko Kid
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      Re: They're doing this backward...

      You seem to have missed the bit where Plusnet (or anyone else) doesn't know what effect it will have on various applications that Joe Q Public might be using. Sure, they could opt everyone in, but then have 90% of their customers complaining that X no longer works for them, and switching ISP. Not a great move.

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      1. Phil W
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        Re: They're doing this backward...

        Well, obviously don't opt EVERYONE in at once.

        Do it the virgin media way (one thing they do quite well) and test new network config/firmware updates on a small test group and increase the test group size until you're confident it works ok. Then opt everyone in.

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    3. ZimboKraut
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: They're doing this backward...

      Weeeeelllll.....

      There is an issue with NAting and joe public...

      As some people may know., NATing can cause problems particular when playing online games.

      It just depends how well the online games handle packet loss.

      Particularly UDP does not overly like NATing.

      As most games use UDP for the transport this can cause problems for gamers who may not know or understand too much about TCP/IP.

      Also when you go into double NATing, (which you would have automatically when following the PlusNet proposal, you would have the PlusNet NAT as well as the NAT on the DSL-router), you can encounter even more problems, as there are plenty of applications, that totally dislike double and more NATing, which in turn would cause problems for the enduser and then again more support requirements for the clientservices.

      etc, etc....

      IPv6 - yes

      IPv4 + NAT = Chaos....

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cloudy with a chance of unreachability

    "The days when everyone ran their own servers are long gone "

    I disagree with that. More people probably run home servers than ever before given the availability of plug and play NAS boxes. Some of those may even sync to cloudy services. Carrier-grade NAT may break a lot of this, which is presumably why PlusNet wants to test CGN. I wish them the best of luck. Section 5.2 of RFC6598 has some of the things to expect.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    for V4 this is going to afftect _every_ ISP and at some stage in the future everyone will need to use CGNAT of some description.

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  9. banjomike
    WTF?

    (better secured) cloud ??

    If I had a pound coin for every time the Reg has been forced to run a story about a chunk of the cloud either going "titsup" or otherwise crapping out, I would have ... several coins. Better secured cloud ?? Not sure about that.

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  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Department for Work and Pensions

    are currently hoarding a /8 so take that back and we've got another half a million IPs to play with.

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    1. Nigel Titley
      Reply Icon

      Re: The Department for Work and Pensions

      That gives us a couple of months at the current run rate.

      IPv6 will be here at some point, how quickly depends on how many people are willing to put up with workarounds like CGN and for how long. The folks who are currently riding on the IPv4 transfer market reckon they have about 3 - 4 years to make their killing and then IPv6 will out number IPv4 and the internet will flip to IPv6. I think they are probably right.

      Personally, these days I don't buy service from someone who can't offer me IPv6. I reckon if they are too stupid or too mean to manage it then I don't really want to be on their network.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The Department for Work and Pensions

        Back in 2006, the IPv6 folks were predicting that 50% of internet traffic would be IPv6 by 2010. Here we are in 2013 and IPv6 hasn't even got to 1% yet.

        People will *have* to put up with CG NAT, like it or not. Aren't there already some S. American countries where the only service offered by any ISP is CGN?

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    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Skoorb
      Reply Icon

      Re: The Department for Work and Pensions

      Sorry, nope, that's the entire Government Secure Intranet, currently 80% of addresses in that range are in use, the remaining space is earmarked for the new Public Services Network:

      http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/internet_protocol_ipv4_address_a

      http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/internet_protocol_ipv4_address_a_2

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      1. John Robson Silver badge
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        Re: The Department for Work and Pensions

        So it probably doesn't need to be in public IP space...

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      2. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The Department for Work and Pensions

        In use but completely wasted in a private network that could be behind NAT like everyone else. Also if government was facing the same problem of exhaustion as everyone else they might see the need to do something about it!

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      3. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The Department for Work and Pensions

        UK gov have 12 million publically accessible hosts? I doubt it

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    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The Department for Work and Pensions

      In reply to AC@13:30

      If they're hoarding a /8 they're sitting on >16 million addresses, not half a million.

      Though, reading the links supplied by Skoorb@13:49 there are two relevant /8 blocks. The MoD's usage of their /8 was above 60% in Dec 2011 and the DWP's usage of their /8 was around 80% at approximately the same date. Summing the addresses in both blocks that's still >9 million spare. But even if it was possible to extricate the addresses from the (inevitably inefficient) network assignments it would still only delay the IPv4 address exhaustion by a few months maximum.

      The answer is to shift to IPv6 post haste, not faff around scrounging IPv4 scraps.

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  11. bcollie

    Phased Change

    What ISPs need todo is start shipping new customers routers that are configured to use IPv6 to the ISP, but are running IPv4 NAT for the customers devices.

    For 99% of customers this would be fine.

    For the 1% needed static addresses, leave them as IPv4 all the way through.

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  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Confession of ignorance...

    By default plusnet offers dynamic IPs, but you can opt to have a static IP for a £5 fee unless you're on one of their budget packages.

    So, I'm assuming that the dynamic IP is still a 'genuine' one and not natted, just allocated from a pool. The change they're planning to make would be to share these addresses between multiple users with NAT. I must admit I'd already assumed that the ISPs were using nat for their dynamic IPs, hence my confusion..

    Have I got that right?

    Anon because I can't bear the shame...

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    1. Jamie Jones Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Confession of ignorance...

      Yes, the dynamic IP address is genuine, and routable. They are not using NAT for these. These IP addresses are shared in the sense that when you disconnect, the IP address you had goes back into the pool, and so is then available for use by another customer. However, whilst you are connected, that address is assigned to you, and only you.

      NAT would involve one of the IP addresses being used by more than one customer at once, in that the customers will get a network-unique 'private' address, which NAT's out to the public internet via one IP address - in other words, different customers will be seen to use the same "public" IP address at the same time,

      If you currently have more than one computer at home connected to the internet at the same time, then this will be down to your NAT router. Your dynamically assigned (but unique) IP address is visible to the outside world, whilst your home systems get a seperate home-unique 'private' address.

      TL; DR : Basically, the sort of NAT setup that most people have at home to get more than one computer online at the same time will be extended to the ISP level, where the ISP will have groups of public IP's NATted to a group of simultaneous customers.

      You'll then be running NAT through NAT to reach the internet, but as long as the 'private' ip address range used by the isp don't clash with the private IP range used at home, then this will still work.

      ( I'd guess that plusnet would start using some of the 172.16.x.x - 172.31.x.x private address range, or something obscure in 10.x.x.x because most home setups tend to default to using 192.168.0.x)

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      1. paulcupis
        Reply Icon

        Re: Confession of ignorance...

        Or they could use 100.64.0.0/10, which is set aside for this sort of use. See also RFC6598.

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  13. nigel 15
    Megaphone

    you'll get my Ip out of my cold dead hands

    banned from twitter for repeatedly calling piers morgan i giant bell end?

    better than sharing with a couple of users would be more on the mobile model. once you share an IP it doesn't matter with how many people. it may as well be loads, the whole network.

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  14. brooxta
    FAIL

    I've got a bad feeling about this...

    Plusnet, BT, Sky, TalkTalk and all the other IPv4-only ISPs need to wake up and smell the coffee. Their management need to understand that there's a market opportunity for their smaller IPv6-also rivals here. All it takes is a year or so more of these kinds of bodges on a creaking IPv4 infrastructure and then along comes a killer app that needs direct contact to a home network resource (I'm thinking something along the lines of ifttt.com or that fork from CES (a killer fork app ... Ouch)) and bosh there goes a sizeable chunk of your customer base. The more the established players prevaricate and procrastinate the more catastrophically vulnerable their market position becomes.

    Come on UK ISPs. Grow up and deal with a C21 internet.

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    1. Arrrggghh-otron
      Reply Icon

      Re: I've got a bad feeling about this...

      Plusnet have IPv6 capability, they have had it for a long time, but it just seems to be perpetually stuck in trails.

      They announced last year that they are stopping the trails due to core infrastructure upgrade. Still no word on when new trails will start up again.

      http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=54e736f8618511fd8c3a5f976d9b0311&topic=106125.0

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