IPv4 addresses to run out in 12 months

The industry is lagging behind in the adoption of IPv6

The remaining IPv4 addresses available to the industry will run out in less than a year, according to the chief executive of the American Registry for Internet Numbers.

John Curran told the ReadWriteWeb blog that less than six per cent of IPv4 internet addresses have yet to be allocated, which will see the industry though the next 12 months.

"Deployment [of IPv6] is where we're behind," he said, warning that companies need to address the IPv6 platform issue quickly.

IPv4 addresses are derived from a 32-bit number string, compared to the 128-bit string used in the IPv6 system. The number of internet connected devices is increasing at a staggering rate, and the amount of available addresses is reaching a crunch point.

Vint Cerf, the so-called Father of the Internet, told the IPv6 Implementors' Conference last month that he is seriously concerned about the situation.

"We're now down below the 10 per cent level with IPv4 available addresses, and certainly within a year's time the allocations will have been exhausted," he said. "Plainly we are at cusp in the IP address space for the internet."

Cerf warned that the shortage could lead to a black market in IPv4 address spaces creating industry fragmentation.