Current estimates are that before the end of 2011, the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), who are responsible for the distribution of top-level IP addresses, will quite simply run out of stock!
IP addresses are the way the internet and networks access each other. They’re similar to your house number, street, town and postcode. It’s how you’re found in the digital ether.
The current system is called IPv4 because there are 4 blocks of numbers “001.002.003.004″, but the problem is that this only allows for 4,294 Million unique addresses – which sounds a lot – but really isn’t in computer terms.
For over a decade now, the technical community has offered IPv6 – which gives 6 blocks of numbers (a trillion, trillion, trillion addresses!) – but worldwide take-up of this technology has been minimal. We’re quickly approaching the final 10% of available IPv4 addresses, so ignoring this technology to try and save money seems incredibly short-sighted.
Across Europe, the middle east and central Asia, it seems that only 17 percent of businesses have plans in place to adopt the new technology. And Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) are the biggest culprits, with 92 percent not having any IPv6 in use or no significant level of IPv6 traffic. Bizarrely, it seems that only 30 percent of EU organisations are even worried about this fact, compared to nearly half of organisations outside of the EU.
The major problem with all this is that the new IPv6 addresses are not backwardly-compatible. So all routers and network systems running IPv4 will not be able to understand or recognise the new IPv6.
Given how important the internet has become to the world economy, you’d think that government and business would be putting a higher priority on the transition. It’s essential to the continued expansion of both the internet and it’s users, otherwise we may face the situation where new devices and people will be unable to connect – and essentially become digitally-excluded.
Jason Kendall
