The End of IPv4

[Avi]

On Fri, 4 Feb 2011 12:13:53 -0500
Michael Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:

> February 3rd, 2011 is a Day in Internet History.  It is the day where
> all 4 billion IPv4 addresses are no longer unallocated.
> 
> The Internet has run out of IPv4 addresses.  Don't munch all you want,
> we can't make any more.
> 
> There has been a lot of resistance towards switching to IPv6 but it
> looks like its pretty much unavoidable now.

It has always been unavoidable. And that last allocation is only the
allocations from ICANN to the regional bodies (RIPE, AfriNIC etc.) -
each of those still has a chunk of spare ip4 space.

And, even that said, it's far more likely that we'll just end up with
NAT upon NAT of ip4 connectivity, since there's no financial incentive
for anyone to switch to ip6, and nobody yet makes stable ip6 networking
gear (for the same reason).

ip6 needs to become something that customers want before it becomes
something that providers bother to offer. It's not like running out ip4
address space is going to kill the net, just stop more people from
joining.

--
Avi.