> I have been hearing "IPV6 is just on the horizon", "IPV4 is completely exhausted, it's only a matter of months", etc... for years now. What you've actually b

> I have been hearing "IPV6 is just on the horizon", "IPV4 is completely exhausted, it's only a matter of months", etc... for years now. What you've actually been hearing about is various IPv4 exhaustion milestones. The world didn’t suddenly "run out" of IPv4 all at once. The first big milestone was IANA running out in 2011. This meant that the regional registries (which actually hand out IP blocks to ISPs and large networks) could no longer get new space from the global pool. APNIC, the regional registry for Asia-Pacific, ran out a couple months later. (They didn’t "run out" as much as they went into a strict rationing mode.) The same thing happened to RIPE NCC (Europe) in 2012, LACNIC (Latin America) in 2014, and ARIN (North America) last September. (Interestingly, ARIN decided not to do any sort of rationing, North America is just completely out.) AFRINIC (Africa) is the only regional registry with enough space left that they're not rationing. What does it actually mean that the regional registries are out of IPv4 space? It means you can't just go to a registry and say "hey I need more IP addresses" and pay your annual membership fees. You now have to purchase IPv4 space on a private market. Current prices actually aren't that bad - about $10/IP. So to be honest, it's not a huge crisis despite the regional registries having run out. The serious problem will be when it becomes impossible for companies to get the IP space they need at an affordable price. Ideally we should push for higher IPv6 adoption before it becomes a huge crisis.