NetworkWorld reports that John Curran, from ARIN (American Registry For Internet Numbers), talker at the Burton Group’s Catalyst Conference (that agenda is so tasty!), said that 68% of possible IP addresses were used, and only 19% are available (only a few blocks can be assigned for public use). He predicted that in 2011, there would be no more available IP addresses to assign, urging the transition to IPv6.

ARIN has already issued a press release about this topic, but it has not control over the owners of the IP addresses, which need to return the unused IP address back to the available address pool.

The IPv6 Portal has an interesting paper about the issue, where some temporary solutions are discussed:

• Experimental IPv4 blocks could be reassigned to public use but devices would have to be updated.
• Resource reclamation policies could be enforced, but changes would have to be made to routing methods
• Increased usage of NAT would save somes addresses but would break the end-to-end nature of Internet

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