There are 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses. The global internet ran out of them in 2011. Mobile networks responded with CGNAT — sharing one public IP across thousands of devices. That is why your 4G router has no routable public IPv4.
IPv4 exhaustion timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1981 | IPv4 defined. 4.3 billion addresses seemed sufficient. |
| 1996 | RFC 1918 defines private address space. Home NAT becomes widespread. |
| 2011 | IANA allocates last IPv4 blocks. Global pool exhausted. |
| 2012 | APNIC (Asia-Pacific) exhausted. Mobile CGNAT deployment accelerates. |
| 2019 | RIPE NCC (Europe) exhausted last free /22. IPv4 now trades at ~£40–50 per address. |
| 2025 | CGNAT universal on all UK mobile networks and Starlink. |
Why IPv6 has not fixed this for UK installers
| Factor | Reality for UK installers today |
|---|---|
| UK mobile networks assign IPv6? | Yes — but alongside CGNAT IPv4 |
| Legacy NVRs support IPv6? | No — most installed NVRs are IPv4 only |
| SCADA / Modbus clients support IPv6? | Rarely |
| Monitoring centre whitelisting on IPv6? | Not universal |
How Speedroute provides a static IP
Speedroute leases a /24 IPv4 block from the secondary IPv4 market and announces it via BGP from the London hub. Each customer receives a dedicated /32 — globally routable for the duration of the subscription.
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