Why have we not run out of ip addresses?

Question

With the massive growth in internet devices, shouldn’t we have used up all possible ipv4 numbers?

In: Technology

Answer 1

We ran out of unique IPv4 addresses a long time ago. The way it works is that your computer, smartphone, and other devices each have a unique address within your local network, provided by your network router. They all begin with the same numbers. So, all of your devices’ IP addresses might begin 10.20.30.xxx, where each device has a unique number (up to 255) in the fourth position.

That only enables them to “see” each other, though. In order to get out to the internet, you need a modem and an external IP address from your internet service provider. The modem passes the internet traffic to the router, which matches the unique IP address to the destination device’s local IP address. That way, you only really need 1 real IP address per local network.

Google “subnetting” if you’re interested in further research.