NRO (Number Resource Organization) in charge of monitoring the IPv4 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) addresses have announced that only less than 10% of IP addresses remain unallocated. Almost 9 out of every 10 IP addresses has been allocated to a machine and is in use.

(To be noted that the combination of IPv4 addresses from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 constitute about 4.295 billion addresses  – and this is running out).

With this scarcity, all future developments and plans such as global internet access will be hampered badly. NRO points out that this can lead to major issues in as little as 2 years. The organization urges businesses and governments to move to the more future-proof IPv6 version, which has a much larger address pool. But a survey carried out among various organizations show that only a sixth of all the entities have made this upgrade.

What will be affected?

According to Informa, over half the world’s mobile population will move to 3G and 3G+ technologies, enabling internet connectivity to a huge number of mobile devices. Currently most of the mobile devices in use is on 2G, but the growth to 3G+ is projected to come in 2014. With the current trend in the usage of IPv4 addresses, the Internet community will have problems meeting this demand.

Axel Pawlik, the Chairman of NRO says  “With less than 10 per cent of the entire IPv4 address range still available for allocation to RIRs, it is vital that the internet community take considered and determined action to ensure the global adoption of IPv6. The limited IPv4 addresses will not allow us enough resources to achieve the ambitions we all hold for global internet access. The deployment of IPv6 is a key infrastructure development that will enable the network to support the billions of people and devices that will connect in the coming years.”