Iljitsch van Beijnum writes:
It seems there are (or were) 450 million bicycles in China. Think about
it: what's cheaper to mass produce, a 20 kilo steel bicycle with lots
of intricate mechanics, or a simple 1 kilo plastic sub-laptop?
The bicycle, by far. The mechanics are not intricate, the number of
parts is low, the tolerances are generous, the fabrication technologies
are simple. Any type of computer is far more difficult to produce.
So while I completely agree there is no reason to worry about IPv4
address depletion the next five years or so, I wouldn't count on
significant numbers of IPv4 addresses being available in 10 or 20
years.
Much of the Internet will still be on IPv4 10-20 years from now, I
suspect, so some hard problems of address allocation are likely to
arise.