SAC079 - SSAC Advisory on the Changing Nature of IPv4 Address Semantics
Venue
ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) Reports and Advisories, ICANN (2016), pp. 17
Publication Year
2016
Authors
Warren Kumari, Don Blumenthal, Russ Mundy
BibTeX
Abstract
In this advisory, the SSAC considers the changing role of Internet Protocol Version
4 (IPv4) addresses caused by the increasing scarcity, and subsequent exhaustion, of
IPv4 addresses. The exhaustion of the IPv4 address supply has been predicted since
the end of the 1980s. However, the large scale adoption of mobile devices and their
associated IPv4 addressing needs accelerated the exhaustion timetable, and placed
increased pressure on network operators to conserve IPv4 addresses. This pressure
has resulted in a marked increase in the use of Network Address Translation (NAT)
technologies, altering the attributability characteristics of IPv4 addresses, and
requiring changes to their interpretation by parties wishing to use them as
endpoint identifiers.
