Reply to post: IPv4 Address Pool Has Been Expanded Significantly

IPv4 Address Pool Has Been Expanded Significantly

The main reason that IPv6 has not been rolling out smoothly is because it ignored the first rule of engineering in upgrading a working product / system, i.e., the backward compatibility to IPv4. Had it done so, the transition would have been completed a long time ago without even being notices. It is great that NAT came to the rescue by extending the service life of the Internet. First, the RG (Routing / Residential Gateway) version made the private networks possible. Then, the CG (Carrier Grade) version relieved the public address pool shortage, even though the extension may be finite. However, both of them have the basic restriction of not only limited choose of combination, but also allowing session setup only by their respective clients. The RG-NAT turns out to be desirable, while the CG-NAT prevents the Internet from providing the end-to-end connectivity that a full-fledged communication system should capable of.

Our background in telephony enabled us to approach this Internet challenge from the knowledge of PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) that developed practices to expand the assignable telephone numbers through PABX (Private Automatic Branch eXchange) and less known CENTREX (CENTRal office EXchange) technologies.

Instead of digging into the telephony details, we have submitted to IETF a proposal called EzIP (phonetic for Easy IPv4) about the solution from the networking perspectives:

https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-chen-ati-adaptive-ipv4-address-space-03

Essentially, EzIP utilizes the very original IPv4 standard RFC791 and the long-reserved yet hardly-used 240/4 address block to expand each IPv4 public address by 255M (Million) fold. This is capable of serving an area with population up to about 39M which is larger than the largest city (Tokyo metro) and 75% of countries on earth. This capability not only enables governments, but also individuals to offer local sub-Internet services parallel to the current global version. These render IPv6 unnecessary.

What relates to the incident article is that the RG-NAT will be preserved, while the CG-NAT will be utilized for the duration while EzIP-unaware (existing) IoTs are still in use. It should fade out once the subscribers recognize the benefits of the EzIP-capable IoTs. This general scheme will provide a smooth transition to a end-to-end connectivity Internet as originally envisioned when Internet was started with IPv4, yet without CG-NAT, nor IPv6.

Thoughts and comments will be much appreciated.

Abe (2018-08-28 18:53)