IPv4 Address Run Out: Are You Ready For The Big Crunch? Of Drama Queens?

> Remember the Y2K bug? All computers would have to be reprogrammed to make them 'year 2000' compliant? We would run out of time?

Yes. I remember that not much happened to the standard customer. I also remember the crazy sums spent on upgrades of both software and hardware. Illegal number of overtime hours taken. Key people spending the night on site just in case. Some errors were corrected later, even though customers never heard of them. Many problems were avoided exactly because of that preparation.

Now, for a change look at predictions based on current usage patterns: http://www.potaroo.net/tools/ipv4/index.html - just above a year left unless reserved ranges are given away. Sure - a typical user has 0 or 1 address. But IT companies deal in at least /24s. I'm using at least 20 or so addresses (16 at home) for own devices. And there are some people who will keep their x.y/16 just in case they need to expand and request more for current needs. Noone's going to tidy up now. It's better for companies to over-allocate and request even more now, so that in a year there's some space for scaling down.

JVestry,

1. You can't count IPs and internet users, and conclude 2 IPs per user. That betrays a vast misunderstanding of the nature of the internet.

2. Unless you have a very odd ISP, you and all of your neighbors are using public IP addresses. There are serious technical and performance challenges involved when ISPs use NAT to hide their customers from the internet. It breaks a great number of services that users expect to just work. In short, NAT is not a magical de-multiplier.

3. The authority that gives out IP addresses already forces companies to justify their use. There is waste, but not so much that this is a problem we can simply "manage" away.

4. There are rules against selling IP address allocations. So your "free market will fix it" argument is dead in the water.

5. Most routers can "publish" an IPv4 and IPv6 address? What the hell does that even mean? That's garbage nonsense talk.

In conclusion, your blog post is way off the reservation. Factually incorrect, complete conjecture, and just plain made-up gobbledeygook. It's obvious that absolutely no research was done before publishing this. For being so offensively wrong and poorly written, I'm flagging this submission.