River of IPv4 addresses officially runs dry

In a ceremony in Miami this morning, the final five blocks of IPv4 addresses were given out to the five Regional Internet Registries that furthermore distribute IP addresses to the far corners of the planet. The five RIRs all in all have tens of millions of addresses as working inventory, however once those addresses are given out, it's over. Internet Protocol addresses are a prerequisite for all Internet communication—both the sender and the receiver need one. As such, additional addresses are necessary whenever new users are connected to the Internet.

Without access to more IP addresses, service providers are forced to have their clients share an address. For most types of communication, that's a workable solution, nevertheless it makes it much harder for two end-users to communicate directly, just as when making a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) call, video chatting, or transferring files directly using an instant messaging program, or through a peer-to-peer filesharing system.

A more permanent solution than sharing addresses is the new version of the Internet Protocol: IP version 6 or IPv6. IPv4 addresses in use today are 32 bits long, or up to 12 digits. This allows for a total of 4.3 billion addresses; 3.7 billion of them are usable. IPv6 has 128-bit addresses, which are 39 digits, allowing for an nearly unlimited number of addresses. With IPv6, a single home can have billions of addresses, so each Internet-connected device can have its own IP.

Thaler noted that the depletion of the global pool means that the pace of IPv6 deployment as a matter of fact needs to increase. "The urgency for IPv6 deployment will be strongest in areas of major growth, just as deployments of new Internet technologies," he said. "For others, the IANA depletion is a call to action to ensure that everyone is on track to support such worldwide growth while nevertheless keeping with the original principles that generated the Internet's success."

Many people already use NAT at home, however the carrier-grade version in other words implemented in a service provider network will be more disruptive, because local computers can no longer reach out to the NAT device and have incoming packets directed to them.

"To continue to grow their businesses, ISPs will need to deploy some form of IPv4 address sharing—NAT44, NAT64, or similar technologies," Dan Wing, distinguished engineer at Cisco Systems and the other BEHAVE chair told Ars. "IPv4 address sharing will benecessary until all of the content and servers on the Internet support IPv6, which will take many years.Users will for all that need to run servers at home—for webcams, televisionplace shifting, in short on. To accommodate that need, the IETF is working on a protocol, PCP, which allows operating a server behind an IPv6 firewall and a carrier's NAT44 or NAT64."

The pool of available IPv4 addresses is running dry

Even although the pool of available IPv4 addresses is running dry, that doesn't mean that each and every address is in actual use. There are many places around the 'Net where large swaths of IP addresses remain unused. However for various reasons, ranging from having to audit firewalls to the expectations that money can be made from them hereafter, these addresses aren't being released back to the RIRs for redistribution. The fact that addresses are given out in hierarchical fashion doesn't help. The same is true for the phone system: if New York needs more phone numbers, it can't get some unused Wyoming numbers.