The internet is not running out of addresses.
“Google’s “internet evangelist” Vint Cerf has been in the UK and in the headlines this week, visiting the British Computer Society and The Guardian, among others. Both the Times and the Telegraph have picked up the scary “news” that the Internet will run out of IP addresses by 2010, warns Vint Cerf, or just a touch less accurately, Father of the internet: ‘web is running out of addresses’.
“It is certainly true that IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) is running out of addresses, because technically it only supports 4 billion of them (2^32). However, we saw this coming at least 16 years ago, and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) adopted Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) way back in 1996. This provides up to 2^128 addresses (340 trillion trillion trillion), which means there’s well over 4 billion addresses for everybody on the planet. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, IPv6 can provide 2^52 addresses for each of the 70 sextillion observable stars in the known universe, which I think may constitute “comfortable headroom” even for a pan-galactic internet.
“Further, most of us already have computers that can support IPv6, without even downloading an update. . .” Jack Schofield in The Guardian.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
September 26th, 2008 at 06:14
i have a headache.
September 26th, 2008 at 14:25
Phew! What a relief! After all, the essence of the Internet is indiscriminate promiscuity. Fortunately, one won’t have to limit oneself to 4 billion sources of information (all true, of course) but can now look forward to the brilliant ideas of 340 trillion trillion trillion beautiful minds.