Less than 5% of the world's IPv4 address pool remains, according to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Five regional Internet registries (RIRs) are eligible to receive address blocks from IANA, and only 12 blocks, or 192 million addresses, remain unassigned.
When only five blocks are left, a standing agreement between the RIRs means the last five will be divided equally.
The latest figures come after IANA assigned two blocks of IPv4 addresses to the Asian Pacific RIR, APNIC.
Adiel Akplogan, CEO of AfriNIC - the RIR for the African region - explains that at the current rate of consumption, the African region will run out of unique addresses in three to four years.
Currently, there are 12 million unassigned addresses, while another 16 million are expected when the final five blocks are handed out.
Akplogan explains that the current focus, for Africa, should be on assessing both software and hardware infrastructure to ensure IPv6 compatibility. He also adds that emphasis should be placed on engineering skills and education for the new protocol.
AfriNIC and some local ISPs are in agreement that the two protocols will co-exist for some time to facilitate a seamless switchover. IPv6 is a stateless config protocol, meaning little user intervention - most of the work needs to be done by service providers. Consumers or businesses just need to ensure their ADSL (or other Internet-connected equipment) is IPv6 compatible. Windows 7, Vista and Mac OS X already have built-in support for IPv6.
While the threat to SA is not as imminent as in other parts of the world, IPv6 networks are undergoing trials at local service providers. Both Telkom and IS are working on providing connectivity to other IPv6 networks globally.
The current protocol, first put into operation in 1981, only has capacity for around 4.3 billion unique, publicly available addresses. Approximately 500 million addresses are reserved for private address ranges and special functions.
Technologies like NAT provide a means for a single public IP to be shared by an internal network, reducing the load on the address pool. IPv6 does not have NAT, with the ultimate aim of allowing every Internet-connected device to have its own public IP.
IPv6 uses a 128-bit address space, as opposed to 32-bit used by IPv4. Scientific notation breaks it down as 3.4 x 10^38. In real world terms, this is enough address space for each person on earth to be assigned one billion IP addresses a day, for the next 143.3 septillion years.
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