5.3 Merge window, part 1

Posted Jul 18, 2019 9:56 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: 5.3 Merge window, part 1 by jem
Parent article: 5.3 Merge window, part 1

The other point is that between DSR and IPv4 in IPv6 tunnels for services, and the gradual move to IPv6, it's possible for someone like Facebook to stop needing more IPv4 as long as they have full IPv6 support.

This then decouples your growth from your IPv4 address needs to some degree; you need sufficient IPv4 that each load balancer can receive a full set of requests. With current hardware, that lets you receive tens of gigabits per second of upload to your service and requests for downloads per IPv4, while responses to the Internet are dealt with by DSR.

So, as long as people are actively migrating to IPv6 with IPv4 as an add-on, the demand for IPv4 will fall. You just don't need that much IPv4 per service user when you treat IPv4 as a secondary protocol.