/8 end user assignment?

Fri Aug 5 08:44:54 UTC 2005

On 5-aug-2005, at 0:09, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:

>> 2. We know cable companies, dsl providers and mobile companies can  
>> use this many IPs, but they generally seem to make use of NAT and  
>> IPv6. If everyone in this category who could justify a /8 applied  
>> and received them we might be in real trouble with our IPv4 space.

> Actually, I think it'd be GOOD if the v4 space got very scarce very
> fast... it'd make people stop putzing around with v6 amd mae it  
> production
> for real. (perhaps even someone would think about how to multihome  
> in v6?
> in a workable manner)

The first six months of this year nearly 100 million addresses were  
given out by the RIRs. (How many were returned I don't know.)

With some 1100 - 1200 million lying around the IANA storage facility  
unused, this gives us some 5 years before we run out of _unused_  
address space, if nothing changes. Even if there is significant  
growth, it's virtually impossible for those billion+ addresses to run  
out within 3 years.

Five years is a long time, you can upgrade a lot of load balancers in  
such a period. You can upgrade a good number in three years, too.