Yup, yesterday, the central pool of IPv4 addresses officially ran dry as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) allocated the last remaining blocks of address space.

But don't panic, its not like every IPv4 address is currently used. Only 14% are active at the moment. So now it seems IANA will start clawing back unused IP addresses, as they believe there should be room for 2x to 4x the active sites on the internet by doing this simple clawback.

And there is the whole IPv6 solution that is sitting in the wings. That's been in "the works" now for over 10 years. Maybe this will be the final straw that forces the larger companies which control inter-networks to finally switch over. The US Government is taking lead in the IPv6 space, by mandating that all government departments and agencies must upgrade their networks to IPv6 by the end of September 2012.

My host, NationalNet, did their router upgrades last year so they are ready. What about your host? Do you know if they are IPv6 ready yet? Or maybe the real question should be, do you care?