# End if the internet?



## makmakmob (Aug 4, 2008)

I'm not entirely sure if this is bits and bytes material, but I wanted the views of people who where really into computers... well, anyway:

I've been hearing/reading all these theories recently about 'the end of the internet', people saying an American cartel of companies is going to somehow take it over and charge us pay per view, or that we'll run out of IP addresses and everything will collapse or _Italian_ laws will somehow bring about it's worldwide demise. Anyone buy this stuff? Am I horribly wrong in my assumptions? I'd love to hear your opinions.


----------



## WhiteHowl (Aug 4, 2008)

A friend of mine told me that a while ago, and I gave him the response "that sounds like total bullshit," which today still applies.

It doesn't sound like something that should happen, but then again it probably will. The internet started as a last resort communication line developed in America, but I don't think that it's possible to take it away. On the "run out of IP addresses" note, is it possible to run out of IP addresses?


----------



## Pi (Aug 4, 2008)

WhiteHowl said:


> On the "run out of IP addresses" note, is it possible to run out of IP addresses?



2**32=4294967296

That's how many IP addresses there are total. Notice how it's finite?

Any IP starting with 0-3., 10, 127 and 224-255 are reserved. This leaves us with 3674210304
Any IP starting with 172.16-172.32 is reserved. This leaves us with 3673161728.
Any IP starting with 192.168. is reserved. This leaves us with 3673096192

This immediately brings us down to 85% of what we started with.

All of the /8s are allocated to big companies and MIT, which drains us further, plus we've gotta have 2 unusable IPs per subnet anyway because of broadcast/net addresses.

So, yeah, we can run out.

ipv6, however, has 2**128=340282366920938463463374607431768211456 addresses available, but nobody is using it. (well, I was, until my tunnel provider gave me the finger.)

Also, you can't "take over" the internet. The standard is open and anyone can implement their own private network.


----------



## Alblaka (Aug 4, 2008)

> 2**32=4294967296


That are 4 milliards adresses, we have only 6 MILLION humans on earth, so...
-.-
Damn, it are 6 MILLIARDS of humans...
We have to hope that "internet" is a unknown word in third world for long time...


----------



## Runefox (Aug 4, 2008)

Alblaka: Uh, think about that for a second. Individuals have computers, but so do corporations, and they have a _lot_ of them, especially webservers and net-facing file servers/etc, all of which need IP addresses, _in addition to_ all the people out there connected to the internet. That means trouble.

Anyway, the idea is this (and it's a very real threat):

ISP's don't want to / aren't willing to upgrade their networks. Advertise high speeds with no cap. People start to use this bandwidth. So, they cap it off. The caps aren't working to totally curb the problem, so they rally congress to enable them to offer "tiered" internet service. This means that on one tier, you're only allowed to go to certain websites (like you would on your mobile phone) that are "approved" or sponsored. On the other tier, presumably far more expensive than the first, you're given the access you know and love today.

I think this puts it in perspective a lot more:







What they want is to turn internet access into something similar to cable TV. Instantly, small business is swept off the internets. FurAffinity ceases to be. ... Nor FChan. D=

Of course, this would only apply to the USA, but if it happened, it sets a deadly precedent...


----------



## verix (Aug 4, 2008)

Alblaka said:


> That are 4 milliards adresses, we have only 6 MILLION humans on earth, so...
> -.-
> Damn, it are 6 MILLIARDS of humans...
> We have to hope that "internet" is a unknown word in third world for long time...


Yeah but the correlation of one human per IP is a bit silly, because that's not how it works. There are tons of people who take up more than just one IP address, specifically people who host in a collocation facility.


----------



## hiphopopotimus (Aug 4, 2008)

Pi said:


> ipv6, however, has 2**128=340282366920938463463374607431768211456 addresses available



Which is all well and good until people start saying "hey! we have loads of ip's left, lets start allocating a trillion per person"


*[EDIT]*



Runefox said:


> ISP's don't want to / aren't willing to upgrade their networks.


I have a funny story about that, but I wont bore you with it.



Runefox said:


> so they rally congress to enable them to offer "tiered" internet service. This means that on one tier, you're only allowed to go to certain websites (like you would on your mobile phone) that are "approved" or sponsored. On the other tier, presumably far more expensive than the first, you're given the access you know and love today.



Look, the internet isn't some kind of truck, you cant just dump stuff on it... the internet is a series of tubes. And if someone is streaming ten videos at once over the internet, then waht happens to your own personal internet? Just the other day I was sending an internet to my staff last Friday and it didn't get there till today!


----------



## Pi (Aug 4, 2008)

hiphopopotimus said:


> Which is all well and good until people start saying "hey! we have loads of ip's left, lets start allocating a trillion per person"



let's not talk fnord about that.


----------



## Runefox (Aug 4, 2008)

> Look, the internet isn't some kind of truck, you cant just dump stuff on it... the internet is a series of tubes. And if someone is streaming ten videos at once over the internet, then waht happens to your own personal internet? Just the other day I was sending an internet to my staff last Friday and it didn't get there till today!


Hee. =D

Anyway, re the IP issue, IPv6 is again a stopgap, but we foreseeably won't hit the ceiling, just like the y10k bug. By the time we do run out (I imagine space exploration, unless we really really go nuts with the IP's), we'll be using a completely different system. Within the coming years, IPv6 will be transparently deploying to supplement and replace the current system. No idea personally as to when that will be, but ISP's will likely still give you an IPv4 address in a virtual network.


----------



## nrr (Aug 5, 2008)

Runefox said:


> Hee. =D
> 
> Anyway, re the IP issue, IPv6 is again a stopgap, but we foreseeably won't hit the ceiling, just like the y10k bug.


... but we will hit the y2038 bug unless the UNIX kids decide to extend the length of time_t. 



			
				Runefox said:
			
		

> Within the coming years, IPv6 will be transparently deploying to supplement and replace the current system. No idea personally as to when that will be, but ISP's will likely still give you an IPv4 address in a virtual network.


Do you have an article or something on this?  I'm interested.

... and yeah, lots of shops have been giving out NAT'd v4 addresses lately mainly as a security measure for their subscribers, but hey, it doubles as this as well.  Imagine that.


----------



## hiphopopotimus (Aug 5, 2008)

nrr said:


> ... but we will hit the y2038 bug unless the UNIX kids decide to extend the length of time_t.



You forgot Y2.01K for those who fixed the Y2K problem by changing the first three digits


----------



## makmakmob (Aug 5, 2008)

Runefox said:


> Of course, this would only apply to the USA, but if it happened, it sets a deadly precedent...



Why would companies want to bother if it only applied to the U.S.? Doesn't china have the most internet users now?


----------



## icehawk (Aug 5, 2008)

hiphopopotimus said:


> Which is all well and good until people start saying "hey! we have loads of ip's left, lets start allocating a trillion per person"



Too late, we're already doing that. My LAN has 1.84467441 Ã— 10^19 IP addresses assigned to it (aka a /64.)


----------



## verix (Aug 5, 2008)

edit: lol oops I'm dumb


----------



## reigoskeiter (Aug 5, 2008)

if internet goes away im guessing that there will be an riot like there was an riot here in estonia at april i dont know what year...it was an riot about the bronze fucking soldier cuz it was moved to an graveyard? WTF? russians are weak fucks..anyway
i think the internet riot will be much much rioty!


----------



## PixiesKitty (Aug 5, 2008)

I think that we are being too naive to think that there would be no way to have a Fur Affinity or small pages outside the tiered thing. I mean, there were ways to download music for free before napster.

Never underestimate the power of the hackers, pirates and free spirits!

(this message is not supporting piracy, warez or any illegal activity, I'm just saying they are out there. DON'T DO DRUGS!)


----------



## makmakmob (Aug 5, 2008)

PixiesKitty said:


> I think that we are being too naive to think that there would be no way to have a Fur Affinity or small pages outside the tiered thing. I mean, there were ways to download music for free before napster.
> 
> Never underestimate the power of the hackers, pirates and free spirits!
> 
> (this message is not supporting piracy, warez or any illegal activity, I'm just saying they are out there. DON'T DO DRUGS!)



I think the furry/FA community would just move to a bigger website or something; Probably deviantART or some blog network.


----------



## net-cat (Aug 5, 2008)

For some reason, I can't help but think of that South Park episode where the internet goes down for the entire country...


----------



## Runefox (Aug 5, 2008)

Here you go. It doesn't go into huge detail, but the US Federal backbone has already been deployed as IPv6, and it's slowly trickling down the pipes to everywhere else. China is a major backer of the technology, and have a five year plan to replace IPv4 with it.



> russians are weak fucks


Given the political state of the nation, I wouldn't want to test your theory there, personally. But you're welcome to go there and give it a try!



> I think that we are being too naive to think that there would be no way to have a Fur Affinity or small pages outside the tiered thing. I mean, there were ways to download music for free before napster.


Ah, but those ways of downloading music involved actually being able to access other parts of the internet, not just the sites that your ISP lets you use. If you can't communicate out of their little prison cell, you're not going to get around it. If they do it right, breaking through that will be nigh on impossible.


----------



## makmakmob (Aug 5, 2008)

Runefox said:


> Ah, but those ways of downloading music involved actually being able to access other parts of the internet, not just the sites that your ISP lets you use. If you can't communicate out of their little prison cell, you're not going to get around it. If they do it right, breaking through that will be nigh on impossible.



The great firewall of China springs to mind here.
And what about the 'sod you I'm going to India' factor?


----------



## hiphopopotimus (Aug 5, 2008)

Runefox said:


> If they do it right, breaking through that will be nigh on impossible.



And then there will  be a black market for unfettered internet and international dialup, satellite internet, or something more creative will become popular.


----------



## mctanuki (Aug 11, 2008)

The question isn't whether the internet will go away, but rather ready access to it. ISPs could easily start deciding which web sites you can and cannot go to, just as they can already cap bandwidth, disallow the use of P2P programs, etc. Of course, the internet will always be fully available to those who know how to access it, just as the telnet is. The worry is that you'll have to actually do some freaky hacker stuff to get to fchan instead of just hooking up to your Qwest DSL router and putting the address into FireFox.


----------

