“To date, the internet has benefited from an ample supply of IP (Internet Protocol) addresses. The internets standards TCP/IP protocol (IPv4) offers approximately 4.3 billion addresses, but demand is substantial and growing. At current allocation rates, supply appears sufficient to last only until approximately 2011 (Edelman, 2008:3). a) Analyse some of the reasons why this situation has arisen b) Compare and contrast some of the possible solutions to the problem of IP address scarcity. School of Engineering and Applied Science Module CS1150: Communication Skills Mark attained 2:1”

Designed in the 70s the IPv4 protocol was for its time a revolutionary 32-bit number system which resulted in 4.3 billion IP addresses being available in theory. The unprecedented and unforeseen growth of the internet as well as a number of inherent problems with the original design of the IPv4 protocol have meant that the availability of IP addresses has become a critical issue with complete exhaustion expected within a couple of years according to some figures. This essay will look at what caused this problem in the first instance and then consider some of the proposed solutions intended to address this problem.

Not all of the 4.3 billion values created by the IPv4 protocol can be used. The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has reserved 8% of the address space which is equivalent to 20.09 of the 256/8 network blocks. A further 65 (16/8 blocks) are reserved for use in multicast …(short extract)