The exhaustion of IPv4 address space

FireFury03 writes "Cisco has an interesting article talking about estimates for the exhaustion of the IPv4 address space, and the inevitable move to IPv6. It predicts that the IPv4 address space will be exhausted in 2 - 10 years and suggests that it isn't worth trying to reclaim old allocations. With the mainstream use of IPv6 now potentially within the ROI period of many products the manufacturers need to start including support, but will the ISPs roll out native IPv6 networks before they absolutely have to? IMHO, ISPs providing native IPv6 support would be a Good Thing since it opens up the door for peer-to-peer technologies such as SIP without needing nasty NAT traversal hacks, but a major stumbling block seems to be a complete lack of IPv6 support on current consumer-grade DSL routers (tunneling over IPv4 is an option but requires more technical know-how from the end user)." Of course, Cisco may have some vested interest in driving up the IPv6-compatible router sales *cough*, but the bottom line is that the transition will have to happen at some point in the near future.