As the remaining pool of IPv4 addresses dwindles (only 623 million are left!), it turns out that the remaining address space isn’t exactly beachfront property. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) currently has 16 blocks of 16.8 million IPv4 addresses left—out of a total of 221 usable such blocks. In January, IANA gave the 1.0.0.0/8 block (all IP addresses starting with “1″) to APNIC, the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre in Brisbane, Australia, which distributes IP addresses in Asia (excluding the former USSR) and Oceania. It turns out that this block is attracting no less than 150Mbps worth of assorted traffic before getting put into use.
Unless something unexpected happens, we’ll be out of IPv4 addresses at some point in the neighborhood of 2012. So when the next Olympics come around, it’s very possible that some of us will have to watch them online over IPv6.
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