Building India’s Sovereign Cloud: Why IPv4 Scarcity Threatens Digital Independence

As India races ahead at breakneck speed to build a self-reliant digital future, a hidden constraint lies hidden beneath the Cloud. Under the surface of fibre, data centres, and AI workloads, lies the less visible but critical piece, the scarcity of IPv4 addresses. Every device, server, sensor, virtual machine and cloud instance requires an address, a numerical identifier, to connect to the Internet. The foundational Internet addressing protocol, IPv4 has powered Global Connectivity for over four decades. It remains the dominant addressing standard even as the World transitions to IPv6. It continues to serve as the backbone for Internet addressing underpinning most Global Communications.

At the turn of the Millennium when we were building India’s Internet backbone IP Address allocation was never considered a constraint. In the early years, when we as pioneers worked to connect Enterprises, Service Providers Governments and Universities, the focus was on awareness ...