Web Set To Run Out Of IPs?

You all should know what an IP address is. It’s something like 174.135.86.19 – a unique identifier for a computer that connects to the internet. Anyway, dramatic news first – the Web is going to run out of these, completely, in 2010 – unless businesses upgrade to the latest standard, IPv6. Currently, only 17% of businesses upgraded to this – meaning that a whopping 83% of old businesses should still use IPv4.

If this situation is not fixed, we could have an absolute panic as the world runs out of IPs. Currently, the world can handle around 4.3bil IP addresses. Luckily, there’s a thing called a dynamic IP, so that as long as 4.5bil people aren’t online at once, the Web should be healthy. But there’s more and more people, and cheaper and cheaper internet – meaning more people can access the internet, and they predict in 2010, we will run out.

From The Telegraph:

“The IPv4 protocol uses 32-bit addresses, which enables the web to support around 4.3 billion unique addresses. By contrast, IPv6 uses 128-bit web addresses, creating billions of possible new web addresses – experts estimate it could assign a unique address for every blade of grass on the planet.

The EC survey found that of the 610 government, educational and other industry organisations questioned across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, just 17 per cent have upgraded to IPv6. The Commission has warned that the timely deployment of the protocol is vital to the growth and stability of the internet.”

This means that if businesses do not upgrade, we will run out. Sam Pickles, lead enterprise engineer for F5 networks, claims "We’ll be down to our last tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of web addresses by the end of next year.”

This is definitely something to watch out for.