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On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 10:15:35AM -0500, John Gorentz wrote: > At 10:00 AM 1/27/2011, David McFarlane wrote: > >I have been hearing scary stories about IPv4 addresses running out later this year. Which gets me wondering, is MSU doing anything to prepare for this, or need we do anything? Thanks. > > > >-- dkm > > This is more for your amusement than your enlightenment, but maybe ten years ago there was an article in one of the well-known trade magazines that listed Michigan State University as one of a handful of institutions that were hogging a lot more IP addresses than they needed. Doug Nelson may have turned some of the excess over to MERIT. (I'm not sure where I got that idea, though. It might have come from the voices in my head.) > > Doesn't make the issue go away, of course. Right now, MSU has over 500,000 public IPv4 addresses available. This is an allotment that we have held for many years, and we have no plans to release any of this address space. This is likely to be enough addresses for the foreseeable future, although we have considered whether we may need to request more IPv4 addresses (not from ARIN - we know they're going to run out). We are looking into IPv6, although mostly in the planning stages at this point. Our new network backbone is capable of handling IPv6, and we will likely begin to enable it within the coming year. The biggest hurdles are likely to be things such as firewall devices, IPv6 address management, DNS, and DHCP, not to mention the learning curve for all of us. Doug -- Doug Nelson, Network Architect | [log in to unmask] Academic Technology Services | Ph: (517) 353-2980 Michigan State University | http://www.msu.edu/~nelson/