ZDNet is reporting that China, Korea and Japan are fast running out of IP addresses. Governments and academics from the three countries are teaming up, putting aside troubled histories to avert a common disaster.

Asia's plight is especially dire because the region was assigned fewer addresses under the current IPv4 (version 4) scheme, drawn up over 20 years ago.

Renee Gamble, a program manager with market research firm IDC and specializing in IP and broadband issues, cited a few stark numbers.

With IPv4, China has only 22 million IP addresses for its population of 1.3 billion people. Last year, it had about 17 million Internet subscribers, and the figure will hit 62.5 million in 2007. Japan and Korea will also run out of addresses soon, she said.

What's worse, this doesn't include the coming wave of 3G phones and smart, data-enabled home devices, which will all need an address.

The U.S. and Europe are sitting pretty for now, because these regions grabbed most IP addresses. The Americans, for example, own 70 percent of all addresses, she said.

Authorities in North Asia are counting on a new addressing scheme called IPv6 to save the day, and it may be Asia that will lead the world in adopting it, she said.