01 December 2010 | Author: J. Morton News Editor
In the month of November, ARIN and RIPE, two IP address administrators, each received two /8 address blocks for IPv4 web addresses, with a fifth going to an African administrator, the Register reports, which leaves some 2.7 per cent of the web up for grabs.
The IPv4 configuration - the internet gold standard since 1981 - will be filled completely by the spring of 2011, according to experts, including Vint Cerf, developer of the ARPANET, precursor to the internet we know today, and Google vice president.
"There's no question we're going to be out of address space by springtime of 2011 [and], with more devices than ever set to join the internet, such as mobile devices and the 'internet of things', IPv6 will be critical to the future of the internet," he told a London crowd at the launch of 6UK, a group highlighting the need for a transition to IPv6 addresses.
Whereas IPv4 addresses use a 32-bit configuration, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, offering a considerably higher level of flexibility for address allocation and web traffic.
"It continues to boggle my mind that the UK has not taken this up as an issue," Cert said at the mid-November event. "People will ask why their new smart devices don't work. All the promise and potential of these devices will fail if the ISPs [internet service providers] don't grasp this."
Chief Technology Officer of Timico, a UK communications provider, indicated that Cert's projection of Spring 2011 as an 'apocalypse' date for IPv4 could indeed be optimistic, writing on his blog:
"I will need to revise my exhaustion date but February is either looking good or too late."
Is the world running out of Internet?
In the month of November, ARIN and RIPE, two IP address administrators, each received two /8 address blocks for IPv4 web addresses, with a fifth going to an African administrator, the Register reports, which leaves some 2.7 per cent of the web up for grabs.The IPv4 configuration - the internet gold standard since 1981 - will be filled completely by the spring of 2011, according to experts, including Vint Cerf, developer of the ARPANET, precursor to the internet we know today, and Google vice president.
"There's no question we're going to be out of address space by springtime of 2011 [and], with more devices than ever set to join the internet, such as mobile devices and the 'internet of things', IPv6 will be critical to the future of the internet," he told a London crowd at the launch of 6UK, a group highlighting the need for a transition to IPv6 addresses.
Whereas IPv4 addresses use a 32-bit configuration, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, offering a considerably higher level of flexibility for address allocation and web traffic.
"It continues to boggle my mind that the UK has not taken this up as an issue," Cert said at the mid-November event. "People will ask why their new smart devices don't work. All the promise and potential of these devices will fail if the ISPs [internet service providers] don't grasp this."
Chief Technology Officer of Timico, a UK communications provider, indicated that Cert's projection of Spring 2011 as an 'apocalypse' date for IPv4 could indeed be optimistic, writing on his blog:
"I will need to revise my exhaustion date but February is either looking good or too late."
English
German/Deutsch
Norwegian/Norsk
Swedish/Svenska
Italian/Italiano
French/Français
Spanish/Español
Latest News
RSS News Feeds
Related Articles
Tags
