Why was IPv4 not enough
- Written by Modern Australian
It’s been a few years now since the RIPE NCC declared the official depletion of the Internet Protocol addresses. Now there is a transfer market for people looking to lease, buy, or sell IPv4 as well as IPv6 and there are specialized IP brokers and so much has changed. But also, nothing much has changed. The road leading to where we are now is such a long and nuanced journey, but it is an intriguing one. If you are curious as to why the number of IPv4 addresses we got in the 80s was not enough to sustain us for very long, then keep reading. We do want to stress that it isn’t like they could have known at the time, just as we mentioned before, a lot of things can change pretty quickly. The many changes that happened between now and the 80s were a lot, and because of them, the number of addresses depleted a lot faster.
Internet use grew
Back in the 1980s, the number of people using computers that had the ability to connect to the internet was a lot less than it became. A couple of years after the Internet Protocol version 4 was released, more countries around the world were joining the journey to our modern, internet obsessed society. This meant that more and more people were going to need IPv4 addresses, suddenly bringing down the number of addresses that were stored away.
The global population grew
When the Internet Protocol version 4 was first deployed in the 80s, the global population was around 4 billion people. And when the amount of IPv4 addresses was 4 billion and a big majority of that number of people weren’t going to have any use for an IPv4 address anyways, that meant the RIPE NCC would have a lot to spare. However, now the global population has doubled. And once more people started being born, more of them grew to want or need a device that needs an IPv4 as well.
Internet of Things
A part from more and more people requiring an IPv4 address for their devices, the amount of devices needing an IPv4 is also growing. That is the Internet of Things, all the devices that can or need to connect to the internet to communicate with other devices. Think about smart lights, smart fridges, smart cars, and, you get the gist.
