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 have, essentially. There are five regional internet registries (RIRs) and in the last ten years they have all run out of new IPv4 addresses, most recently in November 2019 when the RIR for Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia used up their last one.

Some individual ISPs still have unused addresses, and both ISPs and RIRs can recycle old addresses that are no longer being used.