# Why are IP addresses not enough?

By [tegrfwffe](https://paragraph.com/@tegrfwffe) · 2023-02-27

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The scarcity of IP addresses necessitates the requirement for more IP addresses than are available in the presently used IPv4 protocol. The IPv4 protocol specifies that the IP address length is 32 bits, resulting in a total of 2^32-1 addresses. However, these addresses have been exhausted mainly due to the limitations of the way IP addresses are used, which restricts the number of available addresses to the network. The development of the IPv6 protocol is presently underway, which will provide more public IP addresses and resolve this issue.

Public [network](https://maxproxy.com) IPs have become a cash cow due to the shortage of IP addresses. For instance, in a telecommunications bureau of a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu, the 100M broadband (non-fixed IP) used by the company costs around 8000/year, whereas the 20M fixed public network IP costs 40000/year. The company can use the assigned public network IP to establish servers and secure encrypted tunnels.

Although multi-layer NAT technology can help alleviate the scarcity of IP addresses, it has certain limitations. In this 1:N NAT technology, hosts behind NAT can access the internet, but hosts on the internet cannot access hosts behind NAT. To enable the latter, static NAT needs to be configured on each layer, which increases the configuration workload with more layers. Furthermore, most hosts behind NAT that provide HTTP services use the default port of 80, and a public network IP can only offer one port, i.e., 80. As a result, many businesses that require HTTP services face difficulties.

While multi-layer NAT can mitigate the scarcity of IP addresses, customers who require public network IP addresses still need a substantial public IP address pool.

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*Originally published on [tegrfwffe](https://paragraph.com/@tegrfwffe/why-are-ip-addresses-not-enough)*