IPv4 address exhaustion

Common card · No. 204870

IPv4 address exhaustion was the depletion of the pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses. Because the original Internet architecture had fewer than 4.3 billion addresses available, depletion had been anticipated since the late 1980s when the Internet started experiencing dramatic growth. This depletion was one of the reasons for the development and deployment of its successor protocol, IPv6. IPv4 and IPv6 coexist on the Internet. The IP address space is managed globally by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and by five regional Internet registries (RIRs) responsible in their designated territories for assignment to end users and local Internet registries, such as Internet service providers. The main market forces that accelerated IPv4 address depletion included the rapidly growing number of Internet users, always-on devices, and mobile devices. The anticipated shortage has been the driving factor in creating and adopting several new technologies, including network address translation...

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