The IP Address Shortage Problem Has Arrived

When a company like Microsoft starts running into some technology problems with
IP addresses, you know that trouble is brewing. In early 2015, a network expert
at Microsoft said to an audience at a vast networking industry conference, "We'v
e been having a hard time."
The problem seems to have somewhat crept up on them. What is it? The dwindling s
upply of the common everyday IP addresses that have been around for decades.
It was going to happen someday.
Nearly all the IP addresses in use today are IPv4, for "version 4." The number i
s a unique code the Internet uses to connect us all. Your IP address identifies
both the type of network you're part of as well as your individual "host" or com
puter. Every computer that's online at any one time has a unique IP address. (Th
e exception is small home networks that share the router's IP address; however,
all the individual computers still have a unique connection number.)
If you are on the "WhatIsMyIPAddress.com" home page (MyIP), you'll see your curr
ent IP address. It can change depending on whether you're connected at home or s
ome other location.
In any case, years ago the IP addressing system was set up to accommodate millio
ns of IP addresses that might be needed one day. In fact, there are today about
4.3 billion IPv4-type IP addresses throughout the entire world.
But the Internet has grown or rather, exploded over the past 30 years, perhaps far m
ore than anyone ever expected. And now, some experts are predicting that the num
ber of new available IPv4 addresses could dwindle to nothing as early as this su
mmer.
Think of it like the telephone numbers system in the U.S. decades ago, before th
ere were prefixes and area codes. At one point, phone companies realized that th
ey would soon run out of phone numbers, so they created the area code concept to
solve the problem. Today, new prefixes are still being introduced to handle all
of the numbers needed.
That's pretty much the same thing for the Internet and the IP addresses we all n
eed if we want to connect except that the solution isn't as simple.
Supply and demand.
Microsoft ran into a problem with "private IP addresses," which are special addr
esses that were set aside for companies to use for internal networks. A company
like Microsoft can use the same IP address for different company networks and st
ill connect hundreds of computers with no problem.
Millions of these private addresses were set aside in the mid-1990s, but no one
could have predicted all the technological advances that would soon begin to dra
in that supply of private addresses. It caught Microsoft by surprise their growth
in cloud technology and other business products and services gobbled up the avai
lable private addresses that had been allocated.
It's time to be proactive.
Of course, Microsoft isn't (and won't be) the only company that will have to add
ress this issue. Facebook had a similar issue with private IP addresses, but the
y decided to transition to the future of IP addresses IPv6. That's the next genera

tion of Internet Protocol addressing, which will supply an incredible number of

IP addresses for the entire world.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Facebook "outfitted its public
-facing website for IPv6 at an expense that...could cost 7% of most companies' I
T budget."
And now that's what Microsoft is deciding to do. The person in charge of IP addr
essing for Microsoft said, "...we moved into the action of making the shift from
IPv4 to IPv6 so that we didn't run into problems internally or externally."
That's the right thing to say for a company that's 1) supposed to be a technolog
y leader and 2) experiencing some embarrassing technical difficulties. However,
talk is cheap and implementing IPv6 isn't, which is likely why they've delayed m
aking it a company-wide initiative.
Along the way, however, that solution may cause some problems and headaches.
Everything runs on IPv4.
Any device that connects to an Internet-connected network needs an IP address, a
nd for almost all companies, those IP addresses are still IPv4. For a large comp
any like Microsoft, that means there are thousands of devices they own worldwide
that would need to be converted to the new protocol...eventually.
But until all those devices are replaced by new ones configured to IPv6, they'll
continue to be connected by the IPv4 protocols. And if Microsoft's growth requi
res them to add more devices, it's likely they'll want to use the new IPv6 proto
col and not the older version.
Overall, it simply means that "someday" has arrived. As a network architect at M
icrosoft said at a recent World IPv6 Forum conference for networking engineers,
"I'm only interested in IPv6 because I am tired of people trying to get IPv4 add
resses out of me that I don't have."