How does IPv6 help?
It helps simply because it has a vastly larger pool of unique addresses available. The upper limit of addresses possible with IPv4 is 4,294,967,296. This seems a lot but, for a variety of reasons, only about 14% of this total is currently unallocated. Estimates vary about when the pool will run out but most experts believe we only have three or four years left before the pool runs dry. Just as phone numbers regularly need to expand to cope with growing numbers of users so the net has to expand to cope with its growth. IPv6 is the way that addresses get expanded.
