>>I'd read that. But I think North America (ARIN) has enough to last another year or so.
>
>The point is, as soon as the FIRST of the five regional agency runs out of IP addresses, pressumably there will be companies that have no other option (for new server farms) than switching to IPv6. And this will affect other regions, who will want to access those Web sites.
>
> Interesting to see how many /8s were handed out to individual U.S Corporations in the early nineties (why, for example Ford Motors?):
>>http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xml
>
>The enormous growth of the Internet was hard to foresee some 30 years ago or so.

I understand that but still wonder what criteria was used to determine which corporations should get those allocations. Or was it simply that they were the only ones that applied before the potential shortage became apparent. (I doubt it was the latter)

>But that is irrelevant now - even if ALL unused addresses are reclaimed, that would only postpone the problem a few more years. And switching to IPv6 is simpler than some of the possibilities of extending the life of IPv4. For example, reclaiming Category E addresses (the "Experimental" category) would require changes to just about every computer in the world - so we could just as well switch to IPv6 at once.

I don't know how accurate the assessment I linked was (re-claiming end-user specific allocations) but if ~2yr was a valid estimate there'd be a *lot* more 'IPv6 ready' systems out there by then. But essentially I think you're right - bite the bullet time :-}

>
>>
>>>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12306573
>>>
>>>Many of you probably know already that the old (currently used) Internet addressing system (IPv4) is running out of addresses. When the last addresses are used up, if a company wants to set up a server farm (say, for a Web site) there will be no other option than using the new system (IPv6), which has larger addresses. This system exists for several years now, but unfortunately, transition to the new system is way too slow.
>>>
>>>The specific news item is about IANA (the centry registry for IP addresses) being expected to hand out the last IPv4 addresses within a few days - to five regional registries. The regional registries will continue giving out IPv4 addresses for a while longer, until they run out of addresses. One current estimates for this event is September, this year.