The Internet is Running Out of Addresses

Did you know that every single device connected to the Internet needs to have its own IP address? Under the current system, known as IPv4, the addresses are formed as four groups of up to three digits. Each group of digits can go from 1 to 255, but no higher than 255. For example, Google’s IP address is currently 74.125.226.148. When you type in a web address in your browser, it’s actually translated into an IP address by DNS servers.

The problem with IPv4 is that the four groups of up to three digits only allows so many unique addresses. It must’ve been hard to imagine in the early days of the Internet that so many billions of addresses would be needed, but here we are and some experts claim that we have less than a year before the last address is taken.

I’m not sure I’m ready to fill my basement with canned goods and iodine tablets quite yet. But just in case we find ourselves in an era of an overpopulated Internet, there is another protocol called IPv6 that will replace IPv4 over time. The new protocol boasts an address allocation (number of possible addresses) with so many zeroes after it that I can’t even think how to pronounce the number.

Needless to say, this transition will take time, and in some cases users may see some speed issues. The IPv4 and IPv6 networks will essentially be two different Internets, and there will have to be “translating” services, or gateways, to bridge between the two networks. These gateways will certainly be bottlenecks.

The whole protocol and the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is going to take some time and there will likely be bumps along the way. But there’s really no need to panic as some have suggested. There’s a wealth of information out there about the transition and the protocol itself. Wikipedia, as is so often the case, is a great place to start.