Global shortage of IPv4 IP addresses

06 jul 2022
By System
It has long been known that IPv4 has been depleted, and non-profit organizations that give out blocks have been left with nothing. The last block was given away in 2019 by RIPE, while the first signal of IPv4 scarcity came back in 1991 or even earlier. Against this backdrop, IPv4 prices are getting higher and higher every year.

The average person can ask a logical question: - What are we talking about, and what is IPv4?

Explaining in understandable human language let's imagine that there is some mobile operator, which has some reserve of combinations of numbers (phones), this reserve is limited and can not consist of more than 9 numbers, so there may not be enough numbers for all.

With IPv4 it is almost the same, there are certain rules and limitations, because of which the number of combinations of IP addresses consists of about 4.3 billion, and if we think about the population of the planet which is close to 8 billion, and gadgets, sites, servers, Internet users, etc., even more.

Specifying the restrictions, each IP address must consist of only 4 parts, separated by a dot, and each part must consist of digits only, but no more than three digits in each part, thus creating a global shortage of IP addresses, version IPv4 which physically "not enough for all.

Unfortunately in 1970, the people who designed the Internet assumed that the given stock of IP addresses is enough, but they were very wrong.

Any sane person would ask a logical question, but what actions have been taken to resolve the problem? That's right, in 2012, the World IP Addresses IPv6 was issued, which will cover the stock of IP addresses for the next decades.

The difference from IP addresses IPv4 that has the usual format 11.22.33.44, on the contrary IPv6 has the format 2001:41d0:1004:03c4:0000:0000:95c3:6300, this way the number of combinations is counted in billions.

This format of IP addresses may look like something frightening for a normal user, but for the common administrators it is not a problem at all, and to be more precise, who has ever remembered any combinations of IP addresses! Let's also remember about the global deficit of IPv4, but there are a lot of other advantages of the new version of IP addresses, and the list is endless.

How much the world is ready to completely transition to the new IPv6 format?

The problem is the incompatibility of IPv4 and IPv6, for example, if a person who uses only IPv6 will visit a site, which uses only IPv4, then the site simply will not work. There is also the complexity of setting up a network, buying new equipment, and time to administering the new software, it all adds up to billions of dollars.

If we talk about the average Internet user, by and large, everything has been ready, operating systems, gadgets, routers - ready (you can check the compatibility of your gadget at the link: https://test-ipv6.com/). According to statistics from Google (https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html?25%#tab=ipv6-adoption), IPv6 usage in 2022 reached 40% and this figure will only increase, IPv4 is no longer available, so the growth of IPv6 and the value of each IP address IPv4, - are inevitable.
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