The 12 Days of IPv6: Day 2, The Imminent Sign that IPv4 Addresses Are Near Extinction
Thursday, February 3, 2011 marked the fateful day that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) announced it allocated the last IPv4 Internet Protocol addresses available from the current free pool.
In an article for CNN, “The Internet Has (Kind of) Run Out of Space”, reporter Doug Gross explored the reasons why IANA ran out of IPv4 addresses and why the Number Resource Organization’s (NRO’s) five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs):including ARIN:were quickly running out of their own addresses to hand out.
As our CEO John Curran explained it, it all comes down to simple mathematics. The old pool of Internet Protocol addresses:IPv4:had about 4.3 billion addresses. There are nearly seven billion people on the planet. Given the recent explosion of connected devices, each person uses anywhere from two to five addresses:and in the case of some Web users even more:from their PCs, laptops and mobile devices. Translation: 4.3 billion simply isn’t enough to fit the needs of today’s connected society.
This article showed us how the growth of the Internet affected the free pool of IPv4 addresses; it also helped us brush up on our math skills. Be sure to join us tomorrow for Day 3 in The 12 Days of IPv6 when we take a deep dive into the depletion of IPv4 addresses with one of our favorite science magazines.
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