by Charles Miller

For the purposes of this article I am going to assume that everyone has at least some understanding of the fact that every device connected to the internet needs to have an IP (Internet Protocol) address. Without an IP address your computers, phones, tablets, automobiles, smart TVs, and a world of Internet of Things (IoT) appliances cannot be connected to the internet. So, with some understanding of that it may come as a shock to learn that the world’s supply of IP version 4 (IPv4 ) addresses is now completely exhausted. All the numbers are taken. The supply of 4 billion IPs created in 1981 has been used up. There will never be any more available.

The road to exhaustion started on January 31, 2011 when the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) announced its pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses was officially exhausted. That was followed by a similar announcement on April 15 by the regional Asia-Pacific (APNIC) registry. 2014 saw the Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC) registry run out of addresses. In 2015 the North America (ARIN) registry bottomed out. In 2017 it was the regional Africa (AfriNIC) that sold its last IP address. Then, finally, on November 25, 2019 the Europe, Middle East, and Central Asia (RIPE NCC) regional exchange sold the world’s last available IPv4 address.

The otherwise far-sighted network engineers who designed the internet protocols thought that allowing for 4.3 billion IP addresses should be enough. They simply could not imagine how popular their invention would become, or the explosive growth of internet-connected devices, such as smart phones, and IoT devices that had not yet been invented in the 1970s. By the 1990s, those network engineers believed that the internet would be facing a catastrophe in less than 10 years, but that did not happen. Why not?

There have been some efforts to identify and recover “unused” IP addresses. One time when I bought a static IP address from an internet provider in Texas, they assigned me a block of 16 of them for the same price. And why not? That company had hundreds of thousands available at that time. Around the world today, internet providers have been recycling those unused IP addresses and that has helped somewhat.

The real answer to the “Why not?” question is that there were many factors contributing to why the internet never crashed in the 1990s. Probably the most significant reason has to do with those somewhat greedy folks who ran Cypress Valley Cable TV (CVCTV) in my East Texas hometown. Now would be a good time to go back and read my earlier column to understand the part they played.

Briefly, the cable TV company providing my internet in the 1990s required assigning an IP address to each individual computer I connected to the internet, and charged me $20 per month for each one. Tech savvy customers, such as yours truly, figured out how to buy one of these new gizmos called a “router” that would permit paying only one $20 monthly charge and which would allow the sharing my one IP address with my multiple computers through a technology called Net Address Translation (NAT). That first router of mine cost hundreds of dollars, but saved me thousands on my cable bill.

Today everyone reading this probably has a NAT-capable router in their home, because the internet providers now supply them, basically free of charge when you sign up for service. As a result of NATting, you can have dozens of devices in your home connected to the internet, all sharing the one IP address assigned to you. This was a huge factor in why the supply of IP addresses was not exhausted in the 1990s as soon as some had predicted.

The supply of IP version 4 addresses did most assuredly run out seven years ago, in 2019, yet you might have noticed your internet connection is still up and running. Come back next week and I will describe some of the reasons you are still able to be online today.

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Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with decades of IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted at 415-101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.

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