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The rumor that the Internet will soon run out of IP addresses has been circulating since the late 80’s and then again during the late 90’s along with the Y2K scare. As unbelievable as it may sound the Internet is really running out of IP addresses. This story has been confirmed by one of the Internet founding fathers, Vint Cerf who is also the Google VP. Cerf created IPv4, the web protocol that allows computers and other devices to connect to each other, to private networks and to the Internet. Today, the buzzword seems to be “IPocalypse”, the impending exhaustion of Internet resources. However, this is no reason to start a panic streak and go web space hoarding. The important thing is to understand what it is and knowing how it affects you.
What exactly is an IP address? It is a unique number assigned to your computer or mobile device when you connect to the Internet. If you are a blogger or own a personal webpage, that also has a corresponding IP address. Think of the Internet as your state, your Internet provider will be your city and your IP address is pretty much like your home address, a series of numbers that identify your piece of Internet real estate.
When the project was created in the 80’s, it was initially a US government experiment that aimed to connect computers in a global scale. Using a 32-bit number, this allowed for 4.3 billion addresses to be distributed throughout the globe so every one can connect to the Internet. Well, apparently not everyone, since the demand for IP addresses have increased due to the explosion of mobile computing and user-generated Internet content. The pool of unallocated addresses available in the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is dwindling down and there have been reports that the web will be running out of addresses in the next few days.
As mentioned earlier, IPv4 exhaustion has been a known fact since the 80’s when internet data started to boom, the influx of internet mobile devices and people blogging and tweeting about anything and everything did not help either. With a new mobile device, app and Interned-based service turning up every two seconds, letting a multi-billion dollar prized commodity die out is just not an option.
Bless the Internet gods for being prepared, transitions have been on the way for the last few months now as IPv6 is being integrated into various Internet systems. Although it has been here since the early 90’s it is only now that ISP’s and other players such as Google and Facebook are tapping into it. IPv6 is the next generation protocol that comes with 128-bit address providing four times more addresses than the previous version.
There have been speculations that Internet service and web hosting prices will increase due to these changes but for most part, end users like those viewing websites will not experience any changes. Moving into IPv6 is not without its growing pains, but not enough to stop our current way of life. God forbid the Internet shuts down, how else will we know how our kids are doing, right?
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I know it’s a combination problem but it’s funny how we could run out of something that goes to infinity. haha
Bill Gate new all along this would be an issue, thankfully they came up with a solution before the problem existed.
That hits the target perfeclty. Thanks!