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Run for the Hills: The Internet is Running Out of IP Addresses
By John F | September 27, 2008
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There are only 600 million email address left on the Internet and they will run out by 2010. This is mainly due to the amount of mobile devices, such as Blackberries, that require Internet Protocol [IP] addresses to connect to the WWW.
Before you carry on reading this post, be warned it will get a little bit geeky. So if you don’t like geek, look away…… now.
The current IP system is called IPv4 and has 4.2 billion IP addresses available. There are only 14% of addresses left out of that 4.2 billion. Now, don’t panic just yet. There is a solution, which has been available for the past few years called IPv6.
IPv6 has 340 undecilion IP addresses. This is 340 with 36 zeros after it. So a fair few then! What this should mean is that when the switchover happens most equipment should work. However there will be some equipment that won’t work due to not being able to be upgraded to IPv6.
What will this mean for us mere mortals? I would make damn sure that any future purchases that involve a piece of computer equipment that needs to access the Internet, will be compliant with IPv6.
Any current portable devices that you may think won’t work with IPv6, you should start enquiring as to whether it will work or replace it with an IPv6 compliant version.
Computers and laptops should be ok as the operating system will take care of the IPv6 stuff, what you need to be careful of is portable devices that need an IP address to access the Internet. Some old mobile phones that access the Internet now could be useless when IPv6 kicks in for example.
Topics: Other Computer Usefulness |