Scarcity of IPv4 addresses

My friend Kurtis writes in his blog some points he has been thinking of while discussing “when we run out of IPv4 addresses”. In reality, as he points out so well, we will not run out. It will be harder to get addresses.

It is also the case that unfortunately people that push for IPv6 claim IPv6 will solve all different kinds of problem. Possibly also the starvation problems in the world, and the CO2 emission issues. But, in reality IPv6 is just like IPv4. It works like IPv4, it quacks like IPv4 etc. We will have the same problems with IPv6 as we have with IPv4. Except we will not have any addressing problems because of scarcity of addresses. The largest problems we have with IPv4 has to do with the fact that the overall topology of the Internet is changing. From a strict hierarchy to a mesh, and now to a hypercube. Everyone is connected to everyone else, and our routing protocols can not handle that. We need something new.

But “just getting some more bits” is not a bad thing. And should be enough for having more people looking into IPv6. What people have to remember though is that IPv4 and IPv6 are two different protocols, and too many people building networks today do not remember when we had more protocols than IPv4. We will need support for both IPv6 and IPv4 here and there in the network. We will need application level gateways and 6to4 “nat” boxes.