What’s 10 percent?
The IPv4 addressing scheme consists of a 32-bit address space. According to RIPE that means IPv4 address space is 32-bits (232) in size and contains 4,294,967,296 addresses. At the time of this article, my iPhone app showed that 402,291,729 addresses (9.4 percent) remained. According to the app’s count-down meter, all the addresses will be gone in 593 days.
Is it a problem?
I have written extensively (even made somepodcasts with Joe Klein) about IPv6. Yet, I never really dwelled on this topic. It appears time to start. Like anything else, there are two sides: those that believe it is a problem and those that don’t. Let’s look at both viewpoints before deciding who’s right.
Compare to IPv6
The replacement addressing system, IPv6, uses a 128-bit address space. With RIPE’s help again, the IPv6 address space is 128-bits (2128) in size, containing 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses. That seems like enough.
