Using the Forrester Research PC ownership growth-rate of 15% a year, with 2 billion working and in use by the end of 2015, we have constructed a partial model of the decreasing number of IP addresses available.
In 2015 there will be approx. 2 billion in use.
In 2017 there will be approx. 2.645 billion in use.
In 2019 there will be approx. 3.4980125 billion in use.
In 2020 there will be approx. 4.0227144 billion in use.
In 2021 there will be approx. 4.6261215 billion in use.
The four numbers in an IP address are called octets, because they each have eight positions when viewed in binary form. If you add all the positions together, you get 32, which is why IP addresses are considered 32-bit numbers. Since each of the eight positions can have two different states (1 or zero), the total number of possible combinations per octet is 28 or 256. So each octet can contain any value between zero and 255. Combine the four octets and you get 232 or a possible 4,294,967,296 unique values.
With the possible 4,294,967,294 unique values of IP addresses(not counting 0.0.0.0 used for default network and 255.255.255.255 for broadcasts), there will be a shortage of IP addresses by the end of 2021. This is one of the many problem projects SpyderRevolution will be taking on.
