At Current Rates, Only a Few More Years' Worth of IPv4 Addresses

An anonymous reader excerpts from an interesting article at Ars Technica, which begins "There are 3,706,650,624 usable IPv4 addresses. On January 1, 2000, approximately 1,615 million (44 percent) were in use and 2,092 million were still available. Today, ten years later, 2,985 million addresses (81 percent) are in use, and 722 million are still free. In that time, the number of addresses used per year increased from 79 million in 2000 to 203 million in 2009. So it's a near certainty that before Barack Obama vacates the White House, we'll be out of IPv4 address[es]. (Even if he doesn't get re-elected.)"

Comments

recover unused/abandoned IP blocks

[Archfeld]

If the idiots in charge would just go about recovering the HUGE blocks of IP's issued to companies and entities that no longer exist this issue would not exist either, but then as someone else mentioned just implementing NAT in all the appropriate places would also avoid the issue, but from a corporate point of view, then there would be no market for NEW hardware that is IPV6 compliant and it is much harder to track activity from a NAT'd source than it would be if every electronic device in he world had its' own ip. I personally don't WANT my refrigerator feeding Safeway Inc. information on what's in my freezer box, or enabling them to target more ads based on what I buy even though I have gone to the trouble to get a members' club card under a false phone number with NO NAME associated with it...
This "problem" isn't a real problem it just interfers with the corporate right to make a profit of anything they feel like...