Top all-time · #674
Geoff Huston
Personal blog · potaroo.netsystemsweb
Geoff Huston writes Potaroo blog, a personal blog at potaroo.net about systems and web. Since 2008, 94 different Hacker News readers have linked it 221 times, most often “IPv4 Address Report”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 4 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Geoff Huston's potaroo.net for IPv4 exhaustion and address-consumption data, DNS and BGP analysis, and RFC index tools; a few recommend specific pieces.
- Recommended for · 4 comments
- 'good information'; bogons write-up 'pretty good'; RFC index 'a good site'; DNSSEC piece to 'consider'.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- IPv4 Address Report8 people · 13 mentions · first linked 2010-05-28
- Traffic in Network 1.0.0.0/85 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2013-02-20
- /tools/ipv4/4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-09-30
- Scaling the Root of the DNS3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-09-26
- Centrality in the DNS3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-05-27
- The Internet of Trash3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-02-03
- Modelling IPv4 address depletion for North America3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-07-25
- The IPv6 Transition3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-10-20
- Comparing TCP and QUIC3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-11-02
- IPv4 to IPv6 transition - optimistic plans & what is unfortunately happening now2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-08-02
What Hacker News says?
This is like saying "Whether people like it or not the King of France is sovereign." Why is the operation of the DNS a commercial endeavor, and what would go wrong if it were not be the case? There are a huge number of examples of successful internet infrastructure projects that are non-commercial, perhaps with commercial participants or sponsors but not commercial themselves. (The IETF, Let's Encrypt, and Linux all…
Comment linking /ispcol/2020-09/root.html
on “How We Saved Dot Org”Submitted 460M Indian Internet Users Are Now on IPv6 as a story · 264 points
HN discussionAn inflexion point can go either way, the question is have we already passed that point with v6 or is this the start of a decline that ends with it failing to replace v4? (Stealing this from Geoff Huston, see page 41 of his presentation [0]) [0] https://www.potaroo.net/presentations/2021-03-02-ipv6-deploy...
Comment linking /presentations/2021-03-02-ipv6-deployment-status-apnic51.pdf
on “IPv4 pricing”Submitted The IPv6 Transition as a story · 226 points
HN discussionThe problem is the number of updates / changes that happen all the time in BGP, and having each router cryptographically validate each one / sign every update it sends.... it doesn’t scale well. The BGPSEC theory is there but not sure if we can make a workable system. https://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2011-07/bgpsec.pdf
Comment linking /ispcol/2011-07/bgpsec.pdf
on “Is BGP Safe Yet?”Submitted A transport protocol's view of Starlink as a story · 214 points
HN discussionDNSSEC allows a recursive DNS server to absorb these Google Chrome junk queries: the resolver can use a secure proof of nonexistence to answer the junk query from cache. Much more efficient, and works to absorb junk traffic in any domain signed with NSEC, not just the root. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8198 https://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2019-04/root.html
Comment linking /ispcol/2019-04/root.html
on “Chromium's Impact on Root DNS Traffic”Submitted DNS Wars as a story · 211 points
HN discussionAPNIC used that terminology in their analysis paper of 1.0.0.0/8, "1.0.0.0/8 has been assigned by IANA to APNIC on the 19th January 2010" [1]. To do this analysis, wouldn't they have had to advertise a route back in 2010? [1] http://www.potaroo.net/studies/1slash8/1slash8.html
Comment linking /studies/1slash8/1slash8.html
on “Possible BGP hijack of 1.1.1.1”Submitted IP addresses through 2024 as a story · 162 points
HN discussionHouston has run a study on the traffic being directed towards 1/8 before. http://www.potaroo.net/studies/1slash8/1slash8.html
Comment linking /studies/1slash8/1slash8.html
on “Cloudflare's new DNS attracting 'gigabits per second' of rubbish”Submitted Geolocation and Starlink as a story · 151 points
HN discussionI don't think this should be downvoted. Serious Internet People have been discussing this exact topic recently: https://blog.apnic.net/2016/10/28/the-death-of-transit/ http://www.potaroo.net/presentations/2017-05-25-death-of-tra... When 90% of traffic goes through CDNs, it will be easier for ISPs to "accidentally" deliberately congest the remaining 10% without too many people noticing. https://ag.ny.gov/sites/defaul…
Comment linking /presentations/2017-05-25-death-of-transit.pdf
on “Introducing Network Service Tiers”Submitted A Primer on IPv4, IPv6 and Transition as a story · 134 points
HN discussionFor anyone interested, this a pretty good write up on "Bogons": http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2004-04/2004-04-isp.htm
Comment linking /ispcol/2004-04/2004-04-isp.htm
on “Close to 735k Fraudulently Obtained IP Addresses Uncovered and Revoked”Submitted What drives IPv6 deployment? as a story · 132 points
HN discussionhttp://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2015-11/v6perf.html I was talking about qualitative measurement like this Quote : These measurements show that in a large set of 1:1 individual comparisons where the IPv4 and IPv6 paths between the same two dual stack endpoints are compared, the two protocols, as measured by the TCP SYN round trip time, are roughly equivalent. The measurements are within 10ms of each other 60% of the ti…
Comment linking /ispcol/2015-11/v6perf.html
on “IPv6 celebrates its 20th birthday by reaching 10% deployment”Submitted Crypto Zealots as a story · 132 points
HN discussionCame here to say this. Learning BNF ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backus%E2%80%93Naur_form ) and knowing how to go to the roots have helped me more than once in my career (started as tester, moved to security engineer, then net engineer, then CISSP, then ISSO, then HIPPA SPO -- now senior sec engineer at top10 UNI) Here is a good site to see what obsoletes and is superseded by what. https://www.potaroo.net/ietf/ht…
Comment linking /ietf/html/rfcindex.html
on “Ask HN: Where can one learn about the history of the internet and the protocols?”Submitted Another 10 years of Internet evolution as a story · 126 points
HN discussion(pilif already covered the main arguments, so I'll keep this short) > ftp server ... port 8000 Of course there are workarounds. This one requires specifying a non-standard port every time you want to use your server. That may be easy[1] now, but it becomes increasingly problematic the more times you create these workarounds. The bigger issue is that hosts behind the NAT are not first-class citizens of the internet.…
Comment linking /tools/ipv4/index.html
on “IPv6 Support for EC2 Instances in Virtual Private Clouds”Submitted Using LEOs and GEOs as a story · 115 points
HN discussionAnd more recently Google's BBR is a newer delay-controlled congestion control algorithm - http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2017-05/bbr.html So it'll be interesting to see if BBR+QUIC can be made to do what FASP does.
Comment linking /ispcol/2017-05/bbr.html
on “A Desperate Plea for a Free Software Alternative to Aspera (2018)”Submitted Comparing TCP and QUIC as a story · 106 points
HN discussion> whether end users can get at least one public IP. That only gets harder as address space limits[1] squeeze more and more people onto Carrier Grade NAT and similar workarounds. > NAT is actually a security feature. No, it's not. All supposed security features are actually from some other source, because NAT is only ever about changing addresses (or port) fields in the IP header. > it hides specific client host addr…
Comment linking /tools/ipv4/index.html
on “Allow 0.0.0.0/8 as a valid address range”Submitted An update on IPv6 as a story · 99 points
HN discussionFor ARIN (where most of us will be getting our IPs) projected runout (assuming no "bank run") is closer to a year out[1] Now, people /have/ been predicting some crazy run on IPv4 for some time now, I was pretty certain it was going to happen in 2011 and while a run is still quite possible, it hasn't happened yet, and there are a bunch of outstanding /8s that could very well be returned; the DoD has been returning bl…
Comment linking /tools/ipv4/index.html
on “Show HN: A simple IP address API”Submitted The Size of Packets as a story · 98 points
HN discussionAPNIC is expected to run out sooner than October. October is on the high end of predictions, with some predicting as early as May based on burn rate. Two different sources: http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/rir.jpg (probability distribution per-month) http://www.tndh.net/~tony/ietf/IPv4-rir-pools.jpg The entire point of this exercise is to raise awareness. The IPv4 reserves are depleted, and the five regions are now…
Comment linking /tools/ipv4/rir.jpg
on “IPv4 is depleted: Final five blocks allocated to registries”Submitted Scaling the Root of the DNS as a story · 98 points
HN discussion
