05-25-2007, 11:47 AM
Quote:According to ARIN's statistics, 19 percent of the IPv4 address space is still available, with 13 percent unavailable and 68 percent "allocated." The group is reluctant to make predictions on when the supply of IPv4 addresses will run out, choosing instead to monitor distribution and consumption trends so that others can do the predicting. "Those forecasts have some variation, but it is clear that this could be an issue as soon as 2010," said the ARIN spokesperson.
It's certainly possible that the remaining 48 blocks of 16.78 million IPv4 addresses in the global pool will be used up by 2010. However, ARIN and its counterparts across the globe each hold about two years' worth of address space to allow for day-to-day operation. This brings the total amount of free address space to the equivalent of 72 blocks. In both 2005 and 2006 ten of those blocks were used up, but so far this year, the rate of usage seems to be increasing somewhat...
full article: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/200...-ipv6.html