Apple iPad Pushing Us Closer to Internet Armageddon
Apple’s latest “i” hit over a million sales in the first 28 days it was available. Combine that with sales of other Internet-abled devices like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other “smart” phones as well as the continued growth of Internet users in general (via cable and other broadband access technologies) and we are heading toward the impending cataclysm that is IPv4 address depletion. Sound like hyperbole?
It shouldn’t. The depletion of IPv4 addresses is imminent, and growing closer every day, and it is that depletion that will cause a breakdown in the ability of consumers to access the myriad services offered via the Internet, many of which they have come to rely upon. The more consumers, the more devices, the more endpoints just exacerbates the slide toward what will be, if we aren’t careful, a falling out between IPv6-only consumers and IPv4-only producers and vice-versa that will cause a breakdown in communication that essentially can only be called “Internet Armageddon.”
Published May 04, 2010
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@David
You're assuming that all those iPads were not in the hands of consumers, whose WiFi is enabled via broadband access points and not necessarily using NAT but instead are simply DHCP'ing *public* IPv4 addresses. Many consumers are likely being allocated public addresses - just as they are with their wired PCs - and thus taking up address space.
Cellular are routed through a gateway, but as mentioned - a gateway can only handle so much traffic / so many internal IP addresses per NAT pool - before it starts to fall over, thus requiring additional IPv4 addresses to route through.