Could IPv4 exhaustion not be pushed back by allowing some of 127.*.*.* (not .0.0.1) to be allocated?

Question

It seems to be that most firmware should, by now at least, look for 127.0.0.1 for the loopback and not, e.g. 127.*.*.*

Answer 1

If they change the definition of routable IP addresses, that will create more compatibility problems than it solves allocation problems. That would add less than 1% to the pool of IP addresses, and would be consumed very quickly. In this case, I think the cure is worse than the disease.