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IP Addresses, going, going, gone.
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May 7th, 2007 by 
Jay Westerdal
I just read the IPV4 address report. The bad news is we are running out of IP addresses. The report predicts that by August 20th 2012 there will be no more free IP addresses to assign to anyone. Internet Service Providers that want IP addresses currently must go to an ICANN approved address group and request new IP addresses. But in the future, we could have to go through IP address brokers that accumulate spectrum and sell it off in a grey market. Could organizations buy failing ISPs for their spectrum rather then the actual customer base. It is certain we will run out of non-allocated addresses by 2012. I would like to see governments actually go on the record and mandate all equipment be IPV6 compatible.
However if ICANN seizes unused address space from squatters and recycles it, this will give the world enough address space until 2026. But the question is how will ICANN seize used IP addresses? There is no proposed seizer policy right now, but when one gets formed, expect companies to start utilizing that vacant space so they can claim it is in use. I don’t see anyone wanting to give back address space. It will be hard to take back address space.
Even if ICANN is able to seize all unused spectrum, we still run out of space in 2026. The only recourse is if eveyone in the world is fully compliant to IPV6. I just don’t see the world changing that fast - systems are put into place and they need to be backwards compatible. It is critical to large organizations that they be on the old address space. I expect that address space is going to be a large issue in the next few years!
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Posted in ICANN, IP Address |
May 7th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
I think that ipv6 will be implemented if ipv4 addresses are scarce.
Either that or the net will server split into darknets.
May 11th, 2007 at 2:56 am
To my knowledge all modern operating systems have had IPv6 support built-in or available for years. It just isn’t turned on by default. Although I see where you are coming from I wouldn’t say being on a IPv4 address space isnt a critical part of most large organizations day to day network concerns, in the big picture. Even though it might be a headache to switch everything over at first for “large organizations”, they will be doing themselves a favor in the long run. I feel that rather than procrastinating the switch over, all large organizations should be proactive in making their networks IPv6 compliant today, not in 2012 or 2026. Who better than to motivate the governments at large into action. Of course its always the other way around, govts, threating corporations to comply with new standards or else. Personally, I feel that it’s the average consumer who should worry the most. Again, to my knowledge there are not any/many consumer grade routers on the market that have IPv6 capabilities, but I may be wrong. Off course, you really wouldn’t need a router for WAN-LAN NAT purposes anymore with IPv6, but consumers still would want a hardware firewall built into their router. Maybe all today’s hardware based routers need is a firmware update to work with IPv6, but I could envision what it would be like asking 20 million people to upgrade the firmware in their Linksys routers would be like. A nightmare.
May 14th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
The 2012 date has been revised down and remodeled. The current guess is that we will run out in 2009.