It was a best estimate at the time. Reclaiming unused/wasted IPv4 space has helped some but routers have probably had a bigger impact. 5 years ago most ISPs wer

It was a best estimate at the time. Reclaiming unused/wasted IPv4 space has helped some but routers have probably had a bigger impact. 5 years ago most ISPs were working under the assumption that the average customer was going to need (at least) 2 IPv4 addresses. My guess is the economic meltdown probably slowed down the growth of the Internet worldwide as well. I haven't seen any firm numbers to back that up it though.