[members-discuss] Technical solution to resolve the IPv4 Exhaustion problem and to add more 4, 294, 967, 296 IPv4 addresses that are needed in the world

Hi,


  This is interesting, but it would also possible to add more 
"extensions" -- only end side nodes needs to be upgraded on software 
level only, client which sends the data, and the regular IPv4 address 
receiver. No need for backbone level *hardware* upgrades for this.

Extend with 2 additional ie. [0-255].[0-255].[0-255].[0-255].[0-255].[0-255]
Would be the new maximum on base software.

Example:
Server is 11.11.11.1
Client is 11.11.12.1.1.1
Router at 11.11.12.1

Server (11.11.11.1) sends packet with additional header data (there is 
space for this!) with 2 additional bytes for the extension address.
Router at 11.11.12.1 gets this packet, looks inside the header and 
notices the 2 additional bytes and forwards this to client at LOCAL 
11.11.12.1.1.1 (L2 lookup)

Intermediate switches between router and client do not need to 
understand this, only end to end, and the router (which could be 
software driven so 1st step only a linux kernel module!)


BGP or routing does not need changes, as no routes of extended addresses 
are being announced nor allowed to be announced. Therefore each final 
/32 can be extended by equivalent of /16 with very minimal work -- 
initially only software upgrades on each side.


For years i've been wondering why no one has proposed this, so simple 
and elegant with minimal hardware investment. *none* of the bloat on 
IPv6, just a very simple extension. No performance drawbacks on routing 
level, only "end points" need to support it.


Then again, i would wish also maximum packet size to be increased by 
order of magnitude(s).

Proposal by Elad would require hardware level changes on all routers 
everywhere before being of any use, so sadly i think it will not get any 
traction.

My proposal is unlikely to get any traction either, as it's not to the 
benefit of big players (who currently holds vast quantities of unused 
IPv4 address space). I just keep wondering why no one would come up with 
such a simple idea. This could be done at higher than L3 even -- but 
atleast initially would be essentially "L3.5" somewhere between L3 and 
L4...



-Aleksi
Magna Capax Finland


On 4/25/20 9:20 PM, Elad Cohen wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> I want to share with you my technical solution to the "IPv4 
> Exhaustion" problem (without to upgrade each and every router that 
> exist in the internet), using the below implementation there will be 
> more 4,294,967,296‬ IPv4 addresses that the world needs so much:
>
> Currently in an IPv4 packet - the source address and the destination 
> address are being represented each by four bytes, each of these four 
> bytes are being displayed as: [0-255].[0-255].[0-255].[0-255]
>
> But it is up to us to choose how we want to display them, for example: 
> four bytes can also be displayed as [0-65535].[0-65535] (two numbers 
> and one dot, the two numbers are bigger because in total they also 
> being represented as four bytes)
>
> So there can be one set of 4,294,967,296‬ IPv4 addresses (the one that 
> we know in the display format of [0-255].[0-255].[0-255].[0-255])
>
> and another set of 4,294,967,296 IPv4 addresses (with a new format of 
> [0-65535].[0-65535])
>
> We need to have a mark, a flag, in the ip packet header - in order to 
> know if the source address is of the old formatting (IPv4) or of the 
> new formatting (lets call it IPv4+), for that mark the 'reserved bit' 
> in the ip header can be used, so in case the source address is of 
> IPv4+ or in case that the destination address is of IPv4+ (or in case 
> that both the source and destination addresses are of IPv4+) then the 
> reserved bit in the ip header will be set to 1 , we then also need to 
> know exactly if the source address is of IPv4+ or not (meaning of 
> IPv4) and if the destination address is of IPv4+ or not (meaning of 
> IPv4) - this can be done by marking the DF flag if the source address 
> is of IPv4+ (and not marking the DF flag if the source address is of 
> IPv4) and marking the MF flag if the destination address is of IPv4+ 
> (and not marking the MF flag if the destination address is of IPv4), 
> by using the DF and MF bits which are related to fragmentation 
> (whenever the reserved bit is set to '1') we are losing the ip 
> fragmentation functionality for any traffic with an IPv4+ address (for 
> traffic between two IPv4 addresses, the reserved bit is not set to '1' 
> and hence optional ip fragment functionality is unchanged)
>
> We need to know the MTU before an IPv4+ packet will be sent, because 
> no fragmentation will be able to be done with IPv4+ , the current 
> "Path MTU Discovery" (RFC 1191) is not good for that case because it 
> is using the DF bit which we are using as well (and in IPv4+ traffic a 
> DF flag set to 1 is marking that the source address is of IPv4+), and 
> also ICMP protocol can be blocked by routers in the routing path, the 
> solution is to send multiple udp requests (with fixed known MTU sizes) 
> to the destination address (lets call it IPv4+ handshake) - the 
> destination address may or may not receive them (in case a router in 
> the routing path have multiple upstreams and wasn't upgraded to an 
> upper version that supports IPv4+ then it will not recognize the 
> reserved bit and the DF and MF bits related to it, it will not 
> recognize the new IPv4+ addresses and even if the reserved bit is set 
> to '1' and MF flag is set to '1' in the ip packet - it will route to 
> to the destination address just like it is an IPv4 address and not 
> IPv4+ address, meaning to a completely different destination address) 
> - in case the destination address indeed received the IPv4+ packets - 
> it will send back the udp requests to the source address at the exact 
> same sizes (with the reserved bit flag set to '1' and with the DF and 
> MF flags set accordingly) - when the source address will receive them 
> - the source address will know that the destination address is 
> supporting IPv4+ , that ip packets with new IPv4+ formatting will 
> reach the destination and the source address will know what is the 
> biggest size of the udp request that was received - and it will be the 
> MTU for that specific connection between the source and the 
> destination addresses (The IPv4+ handshake will be done again if there 
> is no response from the destination after the initial udp handshake 
> was already completed successfully).
>
> The udp handshake between a source address and a destination address 
> (that any of them or them both is an IPv4+ address) will use a 
> specific udp port, an availalbe unassigned port between 0 to 1023, an 
> operating system networking stack (that was updated for IPv4+ with the 
> operating system automatic updating system) will know exactly what 
> this udp port is for - and will react accordingly, the upgraded 
> operating system networking stack will also check that the destination 
> address (in the IPv4 or in the IPv4+ format) is set locally in the 
> operating system, before sending the udp requests back to the source 
> address (if not then the ip packet will be dropped by the upgraded 
> operating system networking stack). Any operating system that wasn't 
> upgraded to support IPv4+ - will just drop that kind of udp requests.
>
> IPv4+ is fully backward compatible to IPv4 (and any router that was 
> not upgraded yet to IPv4+ will not cause IPv4 traffic to break), it is 
> also not adding any new fields to ip packets or using new fields, 
> IPv4+ will not cause any performance overload for any supported router.
>
> The reason that the MF and DF bits are being use for IPv4+ and not the 
> ToS / IP-ID / Options in ip header are being used is because we cannot 
> be 100% sure that the ToS / IP-ID / Options in the ip header will not 
> be changed or dropped by any rouer in the routing path that wasn't 
> upgraded to IPv4+ (and we don't want to upgrade any router in the 
> world because it is an impossible mission) - in the ip header ToS is 
> being cleared by some routers - IP-ID can be changed by NAT routers - 
> Options field is dropped by many routers, we can trust that the DF and 
> MF flags will not be modified in the routing path by routers that 
> weren't upgraded to IPv4+.
>
> For the above solution not all the internet devices in the world needs 
> to be patched/upgraded to support IPv4+ which is an impossible 
> mission, end-users operating systems need to be upgraded (but it can 
> be done simply using their automatic updating system), BGP routers 
> (and any router with multiple physical routing paths) will need to 
> have its firmware upgraded to support IPv4+, any NAT router that will 
> want to use an external IPv4+ address will need to have its firmware 
> upgraded (any NAT router that will use an external IPv4 address will 
> not need to have its firmware upgraded, only the internet devices in 
> the LAN of the NAT router will need to have a single operating system 
> update in order for them to access IPv4+ addresses in the internet), 
> any home router (not NAT) or home modem will not need to have a 
> firmware upgrade and IPv4+ functionality will be transparent to them.
>
> The deployment of IPv4+ can be fairly easy and very fast, a round 
> table of one person from each one of the 5 RIRs and from each one of 
> the operating systems vendors and from each one of the router 
> manufacture vendors. Even if IPv4+ will be deployed over time, it will 
> not cause the internet to break (devices that need to be upgraded to 
> IPv4+ and didn't yet will work exactly as they are now with IPv4, they 
> will just not yet support IPv4+).
>
> The above will resolve the "IPv4 Exhaustion" problem and will bring to 
> each one of the 5 RIRs almost 900,000,000 new IPv4+ addresses that 
> will be able to the provided to the LIRs worldwide, if you have any 
> question please let me know.
>
> Respectfully,
> Elad
>
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