It’s a shock to see gasoline routinely priced at over $4 a gallon, the consequence, many think, of ignoring impending scarcity of a limited resource over a long period of time. The same may be true of Internet Protocol addresses (IP addresses), the number strings that identify specific locations on the Internet. How many unique addresses are there in the current 32-bit “address space” in the IPv4 protocol? 4,294,967,296.

That may sounds like a lot, but according to some experts, we may run out of IP addresses fairly soon. A report issued in June by the international Organization for Co-Operation and Economic Development (OECD) urging government action on the subject says we may run out of IP addresses as early as 2010 or 2011, although those early dates are controversial.

Why is this important? Because a shortage of IP addresses may be a drag on bringing new networked services on line.