ARIN Region IPv4 Free Pool Reaches Zero

Fri Sep 25 12:00:52 UTC 2015

> > And this may trigger a refresh on routers, as people old or refurbed
> > equipment find they need to change.  The whole reason for the inertia
> > against going to IPv6 is "it ain't broke, so I not gonna 'fix' it."
> 
> Yea, well, it would be nice if upgrading existing home routers
> remained legal, so we could, indeed add ipv6 capability and more.
> 
> http://prpl.works/2015/09/21/yes-the-fcc-might-ban-your-operating-system/

That's not guaranteed to happen, and, I'd note, it has little-to-nothing
to do with existing home 'routers' but rather wifi gear.  While many
home users do have a combined NAT gateway and wireless access point,
the vast majority of them are not running custom firmware and would just
buy a new device anyways.

Part of the real problem here is that manufacturers have generally 
treated devices like home 'routers' as abandonware.  Usually there
is just barely enough RAM and flash on these things to hold whatever
firmware the company was intending to ship, and sometimes they would
not even see any firmware updates ever made available as the software
dev team would move on to the next device.  This is the same thing we
here on this list should all be pretty scared of as the IoT stormfront
comes this way.

You're unlikely to be able to add code to handle IPv6 to a Belkin 
F5D6231, which IIRC used some unusual SoC to provide its modest
services on something like 1MB of flash and 2MB RAM (it's been a
decade so the particulars may be wrong).  Only in the relatively rare
cases where a manufacturer left a lot of extra room (WRT54GL, etc) are 
you likely to have sufficient extra space to do updates to gear.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.