Last Days For Central IPv4 Address Pool

jibjibjib writes "According to projections by APNIC Chief Scientist Geoff Huston, IANA's central IPv4 address pool is expected to run out any day now, leaving the internet with a very limited remaining supply of addresses. APNIC will probably request two /8s (33 million addresses) within the next few weeks. This will leave five /8s available, which will be immediately distributed to the five Regional Internet Registries in accordance with IANA policy. It's expected that APNIC's own address pool will run low during 2011, making ISPs and businesses in the Asia-Pacific region the first to feel the effects of IPv4 exhaustion. The long-term solution to IP address exhaustion is provided by IPv6, the next version of the Internet Protocol. IPv6 has been an internet standard for over a decade, but is still unsupported on many networks and makes up an almost negligible fraction of Internet traffic. Unless ISPs dramatically accelerate the pace of IPv6 deployment, users in some regions will be stuck on IPv4-only connections while ISPs in other regions run out of public IPv4 addresses, leading to a fragmented Internet without the universal connectivity we've previously taken for granted."

Comments

There's no such things as shortages...

[diamondmagic]

I keep seeing this fear of the IPv4 address pool disappearing, but I thought there was no such things as shortages in a free market? So then what's going on here? Clearly the IANA is refusing to allow the prices (and therefore costs) of IPv4 addresses to rise to reflect the true scarcity of them. I think the ANIPC goes as far to say you don't own your IP address to sell. Prices aren't just arbitrary things, they reflect information about scarcity, and if IPv6 addresses were cheaper to adopt than IPv4 addresses, certainly it could only help spread adoption, while still letting the people who most urgently demand IPv4 addresses get one.

The last blocks ought to be auctioned or raffled off right now, and traded between the owners, with the regional registries only registering who owns an IP address range, no different than what happens on a stock exchange floor.