Free was lagging behind when it came to activating IPv6 support on the mobile, but that has now changed. Indeed, a new option has appeared in the Free Mobile subscriber area allowing to activate it.

The transition to IPv6 has been a long-standing issue for operators since the shortage of IPv4 addresses has been felt for several years. The use of the new IP address standard solves the problem; the new protocol has an almost unlimited stock of IP addresses attributable to devices.

At the beginning of December, the Arcep updated its barometer of the IPv6 transition in France. Bouygues is doing well in this respect, with 87% of Android customers and 98% of iOS customers IPv6-enabled. Second came Orange with 35% on Android and 60% on iOS, while on SFR, only 0.2% of Android customers had activated IPv6. Free was last, as IPv6 activation was simply not available for the ISP's mobile clients until then.

While Free has been a poor performer on cell phones, the operator is catching up on fixed Internet networks with 99% of its customers having an IPv6-enabled connection. Next comes Orange with 75%, followed by Bouygues at 28% and SFR at 1.6%.

 Read the article

Source : ZDNet

Despite the shortage of IPv4 addresses, the Arcep draws a mixed picture of the transition to the IPv6 network protocol. In its annual barometer, the gendarme des Télécom notes the progress made by operators in the fixed-line sector, in particular Free, and to a lesser extent Orange. While both have high rates of IPv6-activated customers, SFR appears to be lagging behind, while Bouygues Telecom must accelerate its efforts.

In the mobile sector, Bouygues Telecom has made the most effort, followed by Orange. As for SFR, they are working twice as hard to catch up, while Free Mobile has still not begun the transition.

However, it is the rate of mail hosting that alarms the Arcep the most. Indeed, only Google stands out with more than 95% of domain names in IPv6 for mail servers.

Today, France would rank tenth in the world Top 30 in terms of IPv6 usage rate. It would rank fifth, behind Belgium, Germany, Greece and Switzerland at the European level.

 Read the article

Source : 01Net

As it has just celebrated its eighth anniversary, IPv6's technical specifications were developed nearly twenty years ago. Marco Hogewoning, a spokesperson for the RIPE NCC association, notes that this network protocol has not yet become a viable alternative to IPv4. He even estimates that the transition could take another five to ten years.

Despite the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses in November 2019, things have not accelerated. The economic incentive for small operators and corporate networks to switch to IPv6 could be the key to getting all players in the chain to switch to IPv6. Or the obligation for manufacturers to launch IPv6-capable connected objects on the market. In addition, governments in each country should lead by example with their own sites and services.

In France, Arcep is keeping an inventory of operators' efforts in this area. The latest barometer dates from November and showed that a significant portion of French subscribers are still not IPv6-enabled.

 Read the article

Source : 01net

On November 25th, 2019 at 3:35 p.m., the RIPE NCC made its last IPv4 /22 allocation. The organization is now short of IPv4 addresses. An announcement that comes as no surprise to network operators: the RIPE community has long anticipated and planned the exhaustion of IPv4. Indeed, the RIPE NCC has been able to provide thousands of new networks with /22 allocations through responsible management of these resources by the community.

Even if there are no more IPv4 addresses, RIPE NCC will continue to retrieve them. These will come from organizations that have ceased operations or closed, or from networks sending back addresses that they no longer need. These addresses will be assigned to members (LIR) based on their position on a new waiting list that is now active. Only LIRs who have never received an IPv4 allocation from the RIPE NCC can request addresses on the waiting list, and they can only receive one allocation /24. However, these small amounts of recovered addresses will not be close to the millions of addresses that networks need today.

This event is another step towards the global exhaustion of the remaining IPv4 address space. The emergence of an IPv4 transfer market and the increased use of Carrier Grade Network Address Translation (CGNAT) in recent years does not solve the underlying problem: there are not enough IPv4 addresses for everyone.

Without large-scale IPv6 deployment, there is a risk of moving towards a future where the growth of the Internet will be unnecessarily limited due to a shortage of unique network identifiers. There is still a long way to go, and RIPE NCC calls on all stakeholders to play their part in supporting IPv6 deployment.

 Read the article

Source : RIPE NCC

The Arcep publishes its annual barometer of the transition to IPv6 and sets up a task force to accelerate the process.

The stock of available IPv4 addresses will be exhausted by the end of 2019, and the Internet will "stop growing". A shortage that is already leading to a significant increase in the price of IPv4 addresses on the secondary market, thus creating an entry barrier for new players on the Internet. As a challenge for competitiveness and innovation, the migration to IPv6 for all Internet players is now urgent.

This barometer examines all players in the Internet chain and the progress of their transition to IPv6. In particular, it presents the current status of deployments and the forecasts of the main operators for fixed and mobile networks.

Once again this year, Arcep warns that most of the players are not considering a deployment to address the IPv4 shortage. The Authority invites the entire Internet ecosystem to accelerate their transition to IPv6, the only sustainable solution.

On the fixed network, Arcep notes progress but calls on operators to continue and strengthen their efforts. On the mobile network, it alerts operators to the delay in IPv6 deployment and calls on them to take the necessary measures to address the IPv4 shortage.

A summary of the results, by operator, is to be found in the press release.

On the hosting side, the delay is still as significant as ever. Only 15.5% of the three and a half million domain name websites (.fr,.re,.pm,.yt,.tf and.wf) are currently accessible in IPv6. With only 5.8% of mail servers accessible in IPv6, the mail hosting rate is alarming.

The launch meeting dedicated to IPv6 was held on 15 November. This task force is open to all players in the Internet ecosystem and aims to accelerate the transition to IPv6 by enabling participants to address specific issues and share best practices.

 Read the report

Source : Arcep

Arcep still estimated, before the summer holidays, that the number of public IPv4 addresses available would allow it to last until March 2020. But since then, requests for allocations have multiplied and the remaining stock is melting like snow in the sun. The exhaustion date is now scheduled.... November 5th, 2019.

After this date, the European RIPE register will switch to a strict rationing mode. Organizations wishing to provide themselves will therefore have to register on the waiting list. If so, they will receive a small range of 256 addresses. For those who already have address ranges, they have almost no chance of receiving this boost. "We will focus on players who have not yet received an IPv4 address allocation," warns Marco Schmidt, head of rule development and internal policy at RIPE.

These addresses will mainly come from companies in bankruptcy. Historical actors who have received a large allocation in the past and who no longer use certain beaches can obviously return them to RIPE. But this case will be quite rare. "IPv4 addresses have become strategic assets. Almost no one will want to part with it," says Vincentus Grinius, CEO of Heficed.

The number of IP address transfers is not expected to increase significantly in the future for the same reasons as seen above. However, the price of the IPv4 address could increase significantly as the offer becomes scarcer. There are currently about twenty bids at the global level on the auction site auctions.ipv4.global. The average purchase price more than doubled from $9 to $21 in three years.

This shortage is already inspiring fraudulent minds who are on the lookout to recover stocks of IPv4 addresses. In recent years, a few hundred cases have already landed on the RIPE offices.
RIPE has therefore strengthened its controls to remedy this situation. More than 600 surveys, twice as many as the previous year, were conducted in 2018. Members are now asked to check regularly that their data is correct and up to date.

However, this will not solve the fundamental problem of shortage. Today, no telecom player can ignore IPv4. Even if IPv6 is developing, this technology only connects about a quarter of the Web. "The Internet will not stop working, but it will stop growing. This shortage will especially affect new entrants and growing players, as they are the ones who need new public IPv4 addresses the most. Either they manage to obtain them on the secondary market, or they will have to share IPv4 addresses with several customers," explains Vivien Guéant, project manager in Arcep's "Open Internet" unit.

This situation is far from neutral for the end user as it affects the quality of service. Indeed, when an operator retrieves IPv4 addresses from an actor located in another country or continent, it may happen that this geographical information is not updated.

Address sharing also has shortcomings since it allows several hundred or even thousands of clients to be connected to a single IPv4 address. And this significantly complicates maintenance for the operator and makes it difficult, if not impossible, to use certain applications "such as peer-to-peer, remote access to shared files on a NAS, access to connected home control systems, certain network games", explains Arcep in its "Monitoring the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses".

The police also suffer from this forced sharing. Investigations will be difficult to complete if addresses are increasingly shared, as it often relies on an IP address to find a digital offender. To overcome this situation, European police forces would like operators and ISPs to reduce the number of customers shared per IPv4 address. In Belgium, for example, the telecoms industry has played the game and the introduction of a code of conduct has made it possible to limit the subscriber ratio to 16:1.

The only long-term solution is the widespread use of IPv6. "Industry players have never seen much interest in IPv6, as this technology had no immediate effects: all websites and customers that have IPv6 also have IPv4. IPv6 is only useful if everyone gets involved. IPv4 will probably have to be kept for a long time to come. Some even think that IPv4 will never stop," adds Vivien Guéant. Unless we do like Belarus, which has just issued a presidential decree requiring these ISPs to deploy IPv6 to all users by 1 January 2020. To date, it is the only country to force the deployment of IPv6 through legislation.

 Read the article

Source : 01net

Used since 1983, Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) allows the Internet to work: each terminal on the network (computer, telephone, server, etc.) is addressable by an IPv4 address. This protocol offers an addressing space of nearly 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses. But the success of the Internet, the diversity of uses and the multiplication of connected objects have as a direct consequence the progressive exhaustion of these addresses. By the end of June 2018, the four major French operators (Bouygues Telecom, Free, Orange, SFR) had already assigned between 88% and 99% of the IPv4 addresses they own.

Only 2.856 million public IPv4s remain available at RIPE NCC as of July 23th, 2019.

Two scenarios are now possible:

• 1: allocation of 1024 IPv4 addresses by LIR until depletion.
• 2: allocation of 1024 IPv4 addresses by LIR until the last million available IPv4 addresses, then 256 IPv4 addresses by LIR until depletion.

The most likely date for IPv4 depletion is May 6, 2020 (scenario 2).

If RIPE proposal 2019-02, allowing to limit to 256 IPv4 per LIR (scenario 1), is rejected, it will be on December 25, 2019.

On the day of the exhaustion of RIPE-NCC IPv4, the price of IPv4 on the secondary market for the purchase of already allocated addresses is expected to soar according to supply and demand. Indeed, players who have too many IPv4 addresses can sell them to those who do not have enough or none at all.

A high price that could erect an entry barrier against new market players and increase the risk of the development of an Internet split in two: IPv4 on the one hand and IPv6 on the other. As Jérémy Martin, Technical Director of Firstheberg.com explains: "With increasing demand for a fixed number of IPv4, the cost of renting an IPv4 will double in the next 2 years"

To address the shortage of IPv4 addresses, ISPs have implemented some alternative mechanisms. For example, Carrier-grade NAT (CGN) equipment allows an IPv4 address to be shared between several clients. However, they have several negative effects that make it difficult to maintain IPv4 and almost impossible to use it for a number of purposes (peer-to-peer, remote access to shared files on a NAS or connected home control systems, certain network games, etc.).

For Grégory Mounier of Europol, this can go further and "violates the privacy of many people who could be summoned in proceedings even though investigators are only interested in one suspect. In this context, only a near-total transition to IPv6 can be a sustainable response to this problem."

On the other hand, an operator buying IPv4 addresses from a foreign player takes the risk that its customers will be located outside France for many months and thus block many services.

Accelerating the transition to IPv6 is the only sustainable solution. Only a near-total mutation can allow content providers to do without IPv4.

 Read the article

Source : Arcep