June 5, 2017

Meeting Your IPv4 Needs For The Short Term And For The Long Haul

When a large company like Microsoft starts admitting some globally occurring challenges, you know the problem is real.

In a conference in 2015, a network expert from Microsoft, when asked about the IPv4 exhaustion, said even the company has been having a hard time coping with it.

It is safe to say that nearly all IP addresses around the world are IPv4, with global IPv6 deployment still standing at a mere 10%.

All individual computers, internet enabled devices and routers have unique IP addresses.

Several decades when IPv4 addresses were introduced, the explosive internet growth we see today wasn’t anticipated. Currently, over 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses are deployed around the world. With every person using at least two internet enabled devices (cell phones and computers) it means that each one uses a unique IP address. While millions of these addresses were set aside in the early 90s, nobody saw the exhaustion coming.

Why You Need IPv4 To Meet Short-Term Requirements

Just like all other business owners, you probably didn’t see it coming. While IPv6 deployment is still in process, IPv4 is the primary protocol.

Why do you need in the short term? Because all online traffic is being routed through IPv4.

Your customers are using internet enabled devices that support IPv4 address blocks. Therefore, you need a consistent supply to stay relevant in your industry.

On the other hand, the time and money investments with moving to IPv6 are way more than what most business owners can handle. For a successful transition, you will need to upgrade your software and hardware by injecting a lot of capital—all of which might backfire because IPv6 doesn’t come with backward support.

Why You Need IPv4 For Long-Term Requirements

Since the shortage of IPv4 addresses, they have now been categorized as more of a commodity—that too, a valuable one. If you secure IPv4 addresses right now, you could make huge returns in the near future. According to tech experts, a full scale transition to IPv6 could still take another decade, which means there is a long way to go.

Therefore, securing IPv4 addresses is like securing your IT infrastructure and making an investment that will have a guaranteed return.

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