Web will soon run out of addresses for sites, devices - The Web is running out of addresses

Web will soon run out of addresses for sites, devices
INTERNET
Agence France-Presse in Palo Alto
Jan 24, 2011

The Web is running out of addresses.

With everything from smartphones to internet-linked appliances and cars getting online, the group entrusted with organising the Web is running out of the Internet Protocol (IP) numbers that identify destinations for digital traffic.

The touted solution to the problem is a switch to a standard called IPv6 that allows trillions of internet addresses - the present IPv4 standard provides a meagre four billion or so.

"The big pool in the sky that gives addresses is going to run out in the next several weeks," said Google engineer Lorenzo Colitti, who is leading the internet giant's transition to the new standard. "We have to do something and IPv6 is the only real long-term solution."

The pool in the sky is a fast-draining reservoir of IP addresses maintained by the non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

Icann has been calling for a change to IPv6 for years, but websites and internet service providers have been clinging to the old standard since the birth of the internet.

IPv6 would allow for a trillion people to each be assigned trillions of IP numbers, Icann chief Rod Beckstrom said.

With about seven billion people on the planet, the IPv4 protocol would not allow everyone to have a gadget with its own online address.

Once the supply of IPv4 addresses Icann distributes to the five regional centres around the world are gone, computers and other gadgets might have to start sharing instead of having unique identifying numbers.

"You will start to share with your neighbours, and that causes problems, because applications can't distinguish you apart," Colitti said.

"If your neighbour ends up in a blacklist, you will too. Systems would eventually have trouble handling multiple connections on shared addresses. Things will get slower and flakier."

The effort and expense of changing to IPv6 would fall mostly on internet service providers, websites and network operators that have to make sure systems can handle the new online addresses and properly route traffic.

Consumers, for the most part, should not notice the switch.

"It is important users don't worry," Colitti said, dismissing talk of an "IPocalypse".

Google, Facebook and other major internet players will add IPv6 addresses to their systems in a one-day trial run on June 8 to let all parties involved check for trouble spots.

"We need to kick the tyres on it at a global scale and see if there are some unforeseen problems," Colitti said.

In a worst-case scenario, running out of IPv4 addresses with no switch to IPv6 would mean new gadgets would not be able to connect to the internet because addresses would not be available, Icann says.

"Ideally, people will see nothing," Beckstrom said of a transition to IPv6.

But "if enough networks don't move to IPv6", he said, "people could literally see nothing, because they can't connect the next iPad, iPhone, or whatever".

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