IPv4 addresses dwindle by the day

By Wyatt Kash,
Director of Event Content Strategy & Editor-at-Large

Connecting state and local government leaders

| March 30, 2009

The available supply of IPv4 Internet addresses for the United States, Canada and the North Atlantic region is expected to be exhausted within roughly the next two years, based on current projections.

The available supply of IPv4 Internet addresses for the United States, Canada and the North Atlantic region is expected to be exhausted within roughly the next two years, based on current projections.

That’s according to data supplied by the American Registration for Internet Numbers and a widget now freely available from Intec NetCore.

The widget, which can be found in the right navigation panel on GCN.com's IPv6 portal page of GCN.com, displays the number of days remaining before ARIN is expected to run out of available IPv4 addresses. As of March 30, the number of days had dwindled to 786. ARIN is one of the five regional Internet registries in the world.

Of course, there are a virtually limitless number of new IPv6 addresses available. However, because users in the United States have grown accustomed to an abundance of the old-format addresses, most organizations have taken only tentative steps in preparing for the longer and more versatile IPv6 addresses.

Many organizations, however, may find themselves at a sudden global disadvantage when the market swings toward a more fully functional IPv6 era.

The cost of developing and maintaining systems that can efficiently process both address formats will ultimately prove costly, says Brad Boston, Cisco System’s senior vice president of global government solutions.

He notes that organizations and government agencies — especially those who depend on global supply chain logistics to run their operations — may one day find themselves becoming IPv4 islands in an IPv6-driven world.

In the meantime, GCN readers can keep an eye on the approaching day of reckoning.

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