How can the internet be running out of IP addresses?

Question

I read an article that says “amassing IP addresses has become a lucrative business because the American internet registry and its counterparts around the world are running out of unique addresses—or at least the current version, IPv4, of which there are about four billion. A switch to the next generation is under way, which will make billions more addresses available, but it will take years to complete.” Why is it so hard to just type a code that creates more addresses?

In: Technology

Answer 1

And, on the ipv6 side there is almost no chance of running out of addresses yet ISPs are only providing 1 range of IPs which are typically enough instead of /48 which would allow people 65k subnets which is recommended because of nearly infinite size of the ipv6 address space.