The Internet is Running Out of Addresses!

The Internet as we know it seems like an infinite span of information that's growth is uninhibited. But the latter is proving to be false as the Internet grows at an astronomical rate, eventually hitting a wall where there will be no more internet addresses to use. The predicted year of this impeded effect is due in six years, in the year 2013.

So what exactly are we trying to do in an attempt to solve this problem? Right now, we use a protocol called Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) which uses 32 bits to indicate the address of a device attached to the Internet. The web addresses that you and I see are encoded information that are later translated into computer coding, so that our addresses do not appear as gibberish to our eyes. Currently, IPv4 has a projected support for around 4.3 billion device addresses. As of today, we have used 3.48 billion of those addresses, and we're quickly running out.

The use of an alternate way of encoding on the Internet has been proposed to solve this problem. The new protocol, called IPv6 uses 128 bits to denote web addresses so that "3.4 times ten raised to the power of 38" new addresses are created. IPv6 is also "reverse compatible" with IPv4 so the two can co-exist on the Internet. With the use of IPv6, everyone on this entire planet could have their own IP address, and still have surplus addresses available. Devices including everything from cell phones to vending machines could have its own IP address.

But even through all these positive elements of using IPv6, the United States has been slow to warm up to the idea. Companies and organizations balk at the idea of having every device directly linked to the public through the Internet. By adopting IPv6, companies would need to acquire new network routers, a hassle they are unwilling perform. Instead, companies are waiting until the problem actually becomes a "real" problem.

Developing countries such as China though, embrace the idea of Ipv6 because the potential growth of their Internet is limitless with all the new numbers. Another reason for China to welcome this opportunity is that every device input with Ipv6 will have its own unique identifier. To China, this is an extra bonus to adopting encoding that would enable them to maintain Internet censorship and security.

To the U.S. though, censorship is far from our minds as the only place that Ipv6 would find much use would be in the government and its business associates. But even without Ipv6, we find little evidence that China would be able to get ahead of us in technology.

When Ipv4 runs out, most predict that organizations that have already reserved a select number of web addresses will be able to create a market for IP addresses. Though this is only speculation, six years is not far from now. As we rapidly use up Internet addresses, the future of the Internet is uncertain for the time being until the problem is knocking on our front door.