IPv4 Address Exhaustion Effects on the Earth

Fri Apr 1 01:26:34 UTC 2011

On Mar 31, 2011, at 6:14 PM, "Joao C. Mendes Ogawa" <jonny.ogawa at gmail.com> wrote:

> FYI
> 
> --Jonny Ogawa
> 
> ----- Forwarded message from Stephen H. Inden -----
> 
> From: Stephen H. Inden
> Subject: IPv4 Address Exhaustion Effects on the Earth
> Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 00:19:08 +0200
> To: Global Environment Watch (GEW) mailing list
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> 
> 
> IPv4 Address Exhaustion Effects on the Earth
> 
> By Stephen H. Inden
> April 1, 2011
> 
> At a ceremony held on February 3, 2011 the Internet Assigned Numbers
> Authority (IANA) allocated the remaining last five /8s of IPv4 address
> space to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). With this action,
> the free pool of available IPv4 addresses was completely depleted.
> 
> Since then, several scientists have been studying the effects of this
> massive IPv4 usage (now at its peak) on the Earth.
> 
> While measuring electromagnetic fields emanating from the world's
> largest IPv4 Tier-1 backbones, NASA scientists calculated how the IPv4
> exhaustion is affecting the Earth's rotation, length of day and
> planet's shape.
> 
> Dr. Ron F. Stevens, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said all
> packet switching based communications have some effect on the Earth's
> rotation. It's just they are usually barely noticeable. Until now.
> 
> "Every packet affects the Earth's rotation, from a small ping to a
> huge multi-terabyte download.  The problem with IPv4 is its variable
> length header and tiny address space that can cause an electromagnetic
> unbalance on transmission lines.  The widespread adoption of Network
> Address Translation (NAT) on IPv4 networks is making the problem even
> worse, since it concentrates the electromagnetic unbalance.  This
> problem is not noticeable with IPv6 because of its fixed header size
> and bigger 128 bits address space", Dr. Stevens said.
> 
> Over the past few years, Dr. Stevens has been measuring the IPv4
> growing effects in changing the Earth's rotation in both length of
> day, as well as gravitational field.  When IPv4 allocation reached its
> peak, last February, he found out that the length of day decreased by
> 2.128 microseconds.  The electromagnetic unbalance is also affecting
> the Earth's shape -- the Earth's oblateness (flattening on the top and
> bulging at the Equator) is decreasing by a small amount every year
> because of the increasing IPv4 usage.
> 
> The researcher concluded that IPv4 usage has reached its peak and is
> causing harmful effects on the Earth:
> 
> "IPv4 is, indeed, harmful.  Not only 32 bits for its address space has
> proven too small and prone to inadequate solutions like NAT, it is now
> clear that its electromagnetic effects on the Earth are real and
> measurable."
> 
> The solution?
> 
> "I'm convinced that the only permanent solution is to adopt IPv6 as
> fast as we can", says Dr. Stevens.
> 
> --
> 

It's all true. 

Alse I've been weighing my router and it's 7 lbs heavier with the addition of all these new ip addresses in it's routing table. 

-wil