Talk:IP address exhaustion

Let's Begin

Ok, done the start of the requested article on IP Address Starvation. Had some concerns about it initially as I sometimes think that "Wikipedia is Not a Forum to Request Someone Do Your Homework" should be added to "What Wikipedia is Not", but it has encyclopedic value nonetheless and makes for vaguely interesting reading if you are as geeky as me. Elomis 12:26, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

A good start. The subject is already covered to some extent at IPv4#Exhaustion, and various redirects (IP address shortage, for example) already point there. I think the title sounds a bit off - "IP address shortage" would be more correct (cv. Google's results for "ip address starvation" (36 hits [1]) and "ip address shortage" (617 hits [2]). If this can be made into a solid, comprehensive and well-referenced article I see no reason it can't stand apart from IPv4 (with a "Main article:" link therein leading here). ~Matticus ^T_C 13:38, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I can, let me try over the next day or two, although I have no problems with the merge. I would say this is a case of somebody being given homework or some other type of brief to find out about the phenomenon and requesting the article, and I imagine the 'starvation' phraseology smacks a little of alarmist re-wording :-) I'll flesh this out a little like I intended, but it may still be merged into v4 or exhaustion. Elomis 20:51, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Merging

I do not think this article should be merged *into* IPv4, just the opposite. I think the IPv4 article is already too large and I think a lot of stuff about this subject should be broken out and moved here. Wrs1864 12:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I decided to be bold and went ahead and moved stuff as suggested above. Wrs1864 13:34, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

rename article to IP address exhaustion

What do people think about renaming this article to IP address exhaustion? A google search shows that "exhaustion" to be about 10 times more common than "starvation". Is there a better name? Wrs1864 17:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. The term is more familiar/common, as you've pointed out, and also matches the term used in IPv4 in the section that you merged content from. —Krellis 19:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of popularity the word exhaustion is inappropriate. Exhaustion refers to the total depletion of a resource, starvation refers to the same thing but with the extra focus on the potentially disasterous effects afterwards. If you talk about food starvation you don't simply refer to the fact that there isn't any food, but the fact that there are ill effects on people's health etc. Google is indexing popular opinion amongst laypeople in your search, an encyclopedia comments on clinical fact. •Elomis• 05:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with this assessment. In particular, I see the key difference between "exhaustion" and "starvation" is that when a supply is exhausted, it won't come back, while starvation implies that an increase in supply is possible and could solve the problem. Is there some sort of wikipedia policy or precedent to this? Wrs1864 15:25, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the reason why I didn't move this page quite a while ago is because IPv4 address exhaustion originally had an article and this creates a problem that requires an administrator to help with. (The GFDL requires that we keep attributions and histories.) The IPv4 address exhaustion article was merged into IPv4 about a year ago, and now I helped break it back out into a separate article. In the process of merging into IPv4, some information was deleted and I need to see what, if any, should be restored. I also need to determine if the merger was done for a good reason, and if so, if this article should be merged back into IPv4, or if the situation has changed in the last year, or what. It near the top of my TODO list, but if someone else wants to tackle this issue first, please do. Wrs1864 15:25, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

but there are lots of devices with the same "unique" address

Every host on a network (for example a computer or networked printer) is assigned a unique IP address

Well, unique e.g. to a private subnet. Sure are a lot of devices out there currently addressed as 198.162.0.1. I propose "is assigned an IP address" and let the next paragraph (About NAT) take care of itself. Michael Gold 00:58, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

IP address black market?

Footnote number 2 in the Conservation section cites an article titled "IP Address Shortage Spurs Black Market" in a manner that, as far as I can tell, conveys the impression of a legitimate citation. However, the article is an April fools joke. If your goal is to prove that "several organisations have been assigned 16 million IP addresses," there are far better ways to go about citing evidence (such as, for example, [3]). Granted, this approach doesn't prove anything about the relative usage levels of the allocations in question, but considering that the April fools joke proves nothing, I would have to suggest that any alternative is better than what we have now. 24.5.87.174 16:02, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Messy

The last section is quite messy. C7796E2C 19:23, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

References

The article is really lacking citations and references. I've added in a few. I've added in even more marks. As a result of the former, I have removed some of the links under "References" (in favor of the inline references). Hope no one minds. AWeenieMan 00:53, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

IPv6 Ready?

I'm not entirely sure why this section belongs in this article. IPv6 might solved the IP address exhaustion problem, but this section sounds like advice for the consumer, not encyclopedic content. I feel like this section should be removed and any content relevant to the article should be moved the the IPv6 solution section. AWeenieMan 17:41, 2 July 2007 (UTC)