Population of Earth > 7.5 billion and growing.

IPv4 Addresses < 4.3 billion.

It was just a matter of time before IPv4 was insufficient, no matter how you allocate it.

Edit: wow I have no idea how that got so garbled.

How exactly do you fit 7.5 billion unique identifiers into a 32 bit address space?

And that's ignoring population growth, multiple devices per person, infrastructure addresses and overhead.

Not everyone needs a public IP, right? Especially with the advent of carrier grade NAT.

From earlier in this thread "NAT literally breaks IP". NAT is a workaround. Yes, it's our solution to IPv4 shortage in light of not being able to force the world over to IPv6, but it's not ideal.

CGNAT will hopefully drive people to IPv6 because it's really quite bad. This talk is really interesting in explaining why it's so bad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbk4H6EmZzI

Edit: Changed likely to hopefully... as let's be honest, we'll probably still be using IPv4 in a few decades.

Wow that was a very good, if scary, summary of the situation. Whenever my phone browser drags now I'll just say: "thanks CGN".

If this is your take, why are you replying to me?

I'm not arguing there is (or isn't) a shortage, I'm pushing back on a point premised on the existence of a shortage. Go reply to that other guy.

Your point seems to be that a shortage is not possible because carrier grade NAT. I'd argue that the deployment of carrier grade NAT is proof that one is actively in existence.

True, but more often than not you don't have a choice.