The geek comunity has been worried for sometime about running out of IP addresses.  Luckily, there has been talk about what to do about it.

From a article on Slashdot:

There are 3,706,650,624 usable IPv4 addresses. On January 1, 2000, approximately 1,615 million (44 percent) were in use and 2,092 million were still available. Today, ten years later, 2,985 million addresses (81 percent) are in use, and 722 million are still free. In that time, the number of addresses used per year increased from 79 million in 2000 to 203 million in 2009. So it’s a near certainty that before Barack Obama vacates the White House,we’ll be out of IPv4 addresses. (Even if he doesn’t get re-elected.)

Now why is this important to John Q Public?  Well, right now there is an explosion in the world of new portable technology.  Verizon and Sprint have their MiFi which is a 3G cellular network access point.  Microsoft and Ford are coming out with the next version of Sync  for vehicles which will have an WiFI access point built in.  Kindles and Nooks have Internet connections.  Smartphone/superphones/cellphones all are using Internet connections. Are you seeing a pattern here?

Any device that requires an internet connection requires an IP address.  The more consumers buy Internet connected devices, the more IP addresses get used.

So yeah, this has potential to be a problem…but dont worry.  With geeks around the world working on the problem, an answer will come before Obama leaves the White House.