I'd like to see just one of Mr. Cerf's dire predictions actually COME TRUE.
Come on, let's have an actual meltdown for once, okay ?
Please ?

The bringer of the apocalypse has to ride a horse, because his other ride ran out of petrol.

thyzking.com
there's royal prerogative 
and then there's
decapitalisation
how many soughts are in a google?
a contentious shorting match
"If money isn't loosened up, this sucker could go down," Bush said, according to a witness.
Where did all the other monies go down a whole worldwide black hole?
CEOs may lose their shirks and suspenders, and that's no pants.
May I barter a pint from corporations which they basically dont need?
Not spinnage, pop-eyed as well?


If internet became,say local, that is No long distance or public lost intrest, so active IP address base was much lower or if Surgeon General Declared InterNet Hibernate Day Internationale'.Yeah,m IP4 could be last standard, leaving IP6 addresses reassignment yet that would also mean Uninventing new router & directory technology or corrupting it & Santa would Have To Commit Suicide.
drashek

Ed: Are you volunteer to tell these companies they need to return that addresses ? Or to rewrite all software which assumes 223 to 255 is multicast and will not try to connect to them ? It's not so simple and even 1.7b addresses will not solve problem for long (look at China, India ...). 

We really need to go to IPv6.

There are plenty of unused addresses in the internet and another bunch of addresses under the control of a few corporations which they basically dont need.

These are the net blocks:

001 to 023 thats 385 million addresses alone.
025 to 040, 251 million addresses
042...
046...
049 to 057...
100 to 115.....
173 to 187....
197...
223 to 255, these are originally intended for multicast something that has never happened or been of any real usage, therefore the addresse could be used.

So if you sum the numbers above you will find surprisingly find that almost 40% of the internet addresses are just not used or are in hands of corporations that cannot give them any useful usage. The total amount of free addresses is 1.7bn.