To complement Geoff's numbers, I will add this: there is a phenomenon
that can't be measured by numbers, and this phenomenon is "stockpiling
just in case".
What I see a lot today is enterprise administrators requesting way more
addresses than they could use, "just in case". It's just like when there
is a hurricane warning: even if the hurricane is forecast to landfall
two hundred miles away with a 20 miles error margin, everyone rushes to
the supermarket to stockpile mineral water and rice. We have
collectively said so many times that IPv4 addresses were going to be
rationed that people stockpile them, especially when is costs nothing.
The typical scenario being: a 1,000 person organization, 700 desktops
and some server is going to request a /20 to their ISP because they can
justify it. It costs nothing more than requesting a /24. The reality is
that the organization conveniently "forgets" to mention that 99% of the
desktops and 75% of the servers are behind NAT with a RFC1918 address
and that they barely use two /25s.
It's a matter of money, as always: when IPv4 addresses begin to be
difficult to find, people that have excess of them will sell them, rent
them, or ask for financial incentives to release them. IPv4 addresses
will never run out, they will simply come at a cost. For the next 25
years, as long as I am willing to pay $5/month for an IPv4 address, I
have one.
Michel.
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf