Internet Census: 4 Billion Addresses Just Not Enough for 7 Billion People

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Internet Census: 4 Billion Addresses Just Not Enough for 7 Billion People

By CircleID Reporter
February 01, 2011, 7:52 pm PST Views: 18,089 Comments: 2

As Internet authorities prepare to announce that they have handed over all of the available addresses, a USC research group that monitors address usage has completed the latest in its series of Internet censuses.

There is some good news, according to computer scientist John Heideman, who heads a team at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering Information Sciences Institute that has just released its results in the form of a detailed outline including a 10-minute video and an interactive web browser that allows users to explore the nooks and crannies of Internet space themselves.

IPv4 space is nearing full allocation. Yellow boxes indicate unallocated blocks, while green areas show responses to census and high utilization. (Source: USC Viterbi School of Engineering Information Sciences Institute)

By CircleID Reporter

CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.

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Comments

It's not about people Bob Frankston – Feb 1, 2011 8:26 PM

We should think about an address per chip not an address per person. 4 billion was never enough for deployment and I complained when I first heard about the 32 bit address.

Moving to IPv6 is necessary but doesn’t address (NPI) the larger issues of connectivity (V6 Plan B).

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Not all addresses need to be global Richard Bennett – Feb 2, 2011 3:19 AM

We seem to be able to address all the buildings in the world with street addresses of 5 digits or less. It seems the Internet architects failed to understand how addressing relates to naming.

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