IPv4 Addresses Expected To Run Out In 2010

Once again, the alarm bells are going off that the number of TCP-IP addresses available on the Internet are running low. This time, there are specific dates for when the addresses are predicted to run out.

The IPv4 Address Report lists two possible dates for when the number of IPv4 dates will run out: April 17, 2010 or December 2, 2010, depending on the source.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) predicts the April 17 date. It manages IPv4 addresses, but does not handle things like end-users for ISPs. The Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) is a collection of regional bodies that distributed IP addresses to various areas, and made the December 2, 2010 prediction.

Regardless of whether it’s April or December of 2010, the time of reckoning is only three years away. Now the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the organization responsible for giving out IP addresses in North America, has published a resolution exhorting the industry to get its tail in gear. ARIN is promoting a rapid move to IPv6 (define)ARIN says that 19 percent of the IPv4 addresses are still available, while 68 percent have been allocated and 13 percent are “unavailable,” whatever that could mean. There are 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses, or 2^32. IPv6 has 2^128 addresses, or 16 billion-billion.

There have been efforts to get more mileage out of IPv4 by using tricks like conversions to IPv6 or using duplicate IPv4 addresses within a firewall. This has helped extend the lifespan of IPv4 but it only prolonged the inevitable.

Sam Masud, principal analyst for carrier infrastructure at Frost & Sullivan, warned last year that there could be an IP shortage by 2010. He’s not exactly gloating over his apparent accurate prediction, but does say that the new warnings are “dire.”

“This is like a three-alarm fire as a wakeup call,” he told internetnews.com. “There are steps that can be taken, but the way I looked it, the profusion of intelligent endpoints, IP endpoints, is going to increase IP consumption by the mobility area. It could seriously have an impact in that area. That would be most obvious as far as consumers are concerned.”

While the IPv4 shortage could impact emerging markets like China, India and Brazil, Masud said those companies have gone into IPv6 in a big way, since they were not burdened with legacy technologies and were able to get with the newest technologies first.

The U.S. is actually more likely to feel the pinch because it’s the most dependent on IPv4 and has the most new devices coming online. The federal government has mandated that by mid-2008 all federal agency backbones should go to IPv6, but Masud said “I’ll be very surprised if 20 percent make it by then.”

Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT, said getting companies to adopt IPv6 comes down to cost, “like so many things in business, it’s the degree of hassle involved. If you can get by on what you’ve got now rather than the expense of moving to a new technology, businesses will take the less painful path,” he said.

This article was first published on InternetNews.com. To read the full article, click here.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020