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The end of the Internet is near — and in less than three years, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The reason? More than 85% of the available addresses have already been allocated and the OECD predicts we will have run out completely by early 2011.
These aren’t the normal web addresses you type into your browser’s window, and which were recently freed up by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the body responsible for allocating domain names, to allow thousands of new internet domains ending in, for instance, .newyork, .london or .xxx.
Beneath those names lie numerical Internet protocol addresses that denote individual devices connected to the internet. These form the foundation for all online communications, from e-mail and web pages to voice chat and streaming video.
When the current IP address scheme was introduced in 1981, there were fewer than 500 computers connected to the Internet. Its founders could be forgiven for thinking that allowing for a potential 4 billion would last for ever. However, less than 30 years later, the Internet is rapidly running out. Every day thousands of new devices ranging from massive web servers down to individual mobile phones go online and gobble up more combinations and permutations.
“Shortages are already acute in some regions,” says the OECD. “The situation is critical for the future of the internet economy.”
As addresses run dry we will all feel the pinch: Internet speeds will drop and new connections and services will either be expensive or simply impossible to obtain. The solution to the IP address shortage is an upgrade to new addresses that can accommodate our hunger for online connectivity. Such a system, called IPv6, was agreed more than a decade ago, providing enough addresses for billions upon billions of devices as well as improving Internet phone and video calls, and possibly even helping to end e-mail spam.
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The solution to the IP address shortage is an upgrade to new addresses that can accommodate our hunger for online connectivity. Such a system, called IPv6, was agreed more than a decade ago, providing enough addresses for billions upon billions of devices as well as improving Internet phone and video calls, and possibly even helping to end e-mail spam.
Nothing will happen. Any & all systems on the Internet are IPv6 capable. Windows XP ships with IPv6 (but disabled by default), in Vista IPv6 is enabled by default.
People have been predicting the end of IP 4 ever since I started working as a network engineer over ten years ago. I am not expecting to see IP6 replacing IP4 in the next ten years (nothing like sticking your neck out).
The way the IP address space is now used is a lot different to how it used to be used.
Lots of people used to have their own public address
Originally almost everyone had a unique public internet IP. Now the majority of users have a private number in one of the private address spaces (that is, 10.0.0.0, 192.168.0.0 and 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255. See this for more info.).
They then use Network Address Translation (NAT) to allow multiple users and devices to share a single or small number of public addresses. With the widespread use of NAT there is much less pressure on the IP address space.
A classless society
In the original system, IP addresses were split into classes and organisations would by blocks of a particular type. So they could grab a Class A block or a couple of Class B blocks for example. This meant that large organisation bought up large blocks of IP space so that they had a class large enough for their needs at the time (before wide use of NAT).
If you look at the IP address register, you'll see that organisations like "Deparment of Social Security of UK" and "US Postal Service" still have large class A blocks of the address space. A class A block consists of 16,777,214 addresses.
Fortunately IP Classes are a thing of the past. IP addresses do not need to be allocated in such large blocks. Over the years, organisation such as IANA have been able to get organisations to release many of these blocks. The released IP address spaces has then been allocated out in much smaller blocks.
I'm confident of my ten year prediction because I am confident that it will be a lot easier to squeeze out more IP space from the big blocks and use the space more efficiently with intelligent use of NAT, than it will be to get everyone to move over to a new system.
So what would be there reasoning for going with IPv6 ? and other then maybe Japan and England is not the USA the most internet connected country?
How many Countries use IPv6 over v4?
Seems like it will just make it harder to view for most people.
So what would be there reasoning for going with IPv6 ? and other then maybe Japan and England is not the USA the most internet connected country?
How many Countries use IPv6 over v4?
Seems like it will just make it harder to view for most people.
Sooner or later there will be no more ip4 addresses. (likely later than sooner though) There's a finite number of them. Factor in the logrithmic growth of Internet users as well.
Fortunately, NAT offsets some of the growth factor and limited amount of available ip4 addresses.
i remember the y2k bug before..give people a bit of a paranoia..hahaha..this would not happen, we have enough supply of computer genuises all over the world..
One reason for the switch from Analog to Digital Television is to open up some bandwidth. Basically they found out there were parts of the band they weren't making money. So... if they run out of internet they will find another place to put it.
One important question is, is the change from ipv4 to IPv6 automatic? Say, Japan moves over to IPv6 and the US is still on IPv4, will I be able to go to Japanese web sites still? Or will I have to be using an IPv6 address, or will there be an way for me to just accept that they have a different IP setup from mine?
It's sort of like that move from a Windows OS to a newer version. Lets take XP to Vista, and by the way I use XP and Vista on separate machines. I remember back in 2000 to 2003, so many people talking **** about XP and how it is the worst OS since ME, which was the previous by the way. So many people hated it and tons of rumors went around about it for so long, even now the hard core conspiracy theorists have headlines like WINDOWS XP KILLS FAMILY OF 11 IN BOSNIAThat was not an actual headline to my knowledge. I mean really? I have used XP since September of 2001 and listening to some of the things that people say about it is really amusing. Coming back to my point, its the same with Vista. So many people want to talk about how unstable it is and how annoying the system guard is, but its saving your computer isn't it? It's helping to keep you system safe from **** floating around on the internet. The same is to be said about this, people talking out of turn and just saying things that make since, "sound right", but are just half ass ideas that probably wont turn out like that anyway.
And that's what grinds my gears. Back to you Tom and Diane.
