IPv4 is Running on Empty

According to Latif Ladid, president of the IPv6 Forum the IPv4 addresses managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority were exhausted on February 3^rd. There are no more IPv4 address blocks available for allocation. The sky is not falling, numbers are being hawked on street corners and, yes, please step away from that ledge. The IP community has known of this impending event for years and has developed a solution referred to as IPv6.

From my blog posted on June 23, 2010…“In the simplest of terms, IPv6 is intended to resolve the issue of the world running out of IP address in 2011. IPv4 is based upon a 32-bit address scheme whereas IPv6 uses 128 bits. The difference is dramatic. With IPv4, the Internet has a total IP address capacity of 4 billion unique addresses. In 1980 when IPv4 was released this seemed like a big number, as the engineering groups involved did not foresee the eventual growth that defines today’s Internet. IPv6 represents 3.4x10³⁸ or 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses. I think that might last the planet earth for a while. Other elements of IPv6 include improved security, simpler processing, mobility features and multicast.”

The five regional registries around the world do have IPv4 address blocks remaining for assignment. However, those blocks are expected to be depleted prior to the end of the year. As such, interest in participating in the Internet Society promoted June 8^th "IPv6 Day", a 24-hour test drive of IPv6, is growing. Apparently, Cisco, Comcast, Google, Vonage, Yahoo, Facebook and many other major Web companies are expected to participate. The transition to IPv6 will take decades. Therefore, for most of the Broadvox partners and customers there will be no immediate impact, but the growing number of IP endpoints and devices will affect various service providers and OEMs in short order.

2012 may not be the end of life as we know it (Mayan calendar and Nostradamus fans relax), but it will usher in a new phase for the Internet.