If IPv4 were land
Visualizing IPv4 address allocations as a distorted world map prompts debate over how unevenly this finite resource is distributed and whether that matters compared to population or economic activity. Commenters use the map as a springboard to argue about the slow transition to IPv6, the technical and organizational barriers to migration, and the tradeoffs of workarounds like NAT and carrier-grade NAT that mask underlying address scarcity. Several argue that IPv6 is technically sound but poorly adopted due to incentives, legacy systems, and lack of operator familiarity, while others propose alternative “IPv4 with more bits” schemes and question whether IPv6’s added complexity was worth it.
Visualization and distribution of IPv4 “land”
- Many liked the map as a way to feel relative address holdings; others called land-area scaling “silly” and argued population or GDP would be more meaningful.
- Observations: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Netherlands, and some African countries (Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa) stand out; Canada appears small when scaled by land because of low population density.
- Some noted huge corporate holdings (e.g., large /8 blocks, big cloud providers) and that major platforms now own sizable fractions of all IPv4.
Scarcity, fairness, and CGNAT
- Several commenters from India, China, South America and elsewhere described living behind carrier‑grade NAT (CGNAT) even on fixed broadband.
- Reported downsides: IP-based bans hitting many users, poor online gaming, difficulty hosting services, VoIP/video glitches, and loss of easy “get a new IP” workarounds.
- Others praise CGNAT for default inbound blocking and some anonymity, and note that static IPv4s can often be bought as a paid add‑on.
IPv6: design goals, benefits, and criticisms
- Pro‑IPv6 arguments: huge address space, restoration of end‑to‑end reachability, simpler large‑scale routing and subnetting, avoidance of address conflicts in mergers, and better blocking granularity.
- Multiple links and quotes stress that any “IPv4 with more bits” still requires a new protocol version, updated stacks, DNS, APIs, and coexistence via dual‑stack or translation.
- Critics say IPv6 is overcomplicated for LANs, unfriendly to humans (long hex), and based on outdated assumptions (every host globally routable, SLAAC over NAT).
- Some call IPv6 a failure or “dead” because many services and ISPs still don’t support it, or actively disable it in enterprise/cloud environments.
Alternative schemes and “IPv4+” ideas
- Recurring proposals: extend IPv4 to 64 bits (e.g., prepend extra octets), keep old addresses as a subset, or define an “IPv5/IPv8” that reuses v4 addressing plus new bits.
- Network engineers repeatedly counter that these ideas have the same migration cost and complexity as IPv6 and still need dual‑stack or translation and new DNS record types.
Deployment reality and regional anecdotes
- Examples span: mobile networks running IPv6‑only with NAT64, ISPs with zero IPv6, tunnels (e.g., broker services) to bypass CGNAT, and corporate/hospital outages after ISPs unilaterally moved customers behind CGNAT.
- Adoption metrics are debated: some cite ~50%+ global client support and high per‑country IPv6 usage; others note that many top sites and consumer ISPs remain IPv4‑only, making IPv6‑only use “still unusable” in practice.