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RBP
02-03-2011, 11:33 PM
MIAMI (AFP) – The global warehouse for Internet addresses ran empty on Thursday.

:freakout:

The non-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) doled out its last five batches of "IP" numbers that identify destinations for digital traffic.

"A pool of more than four billion Internet addresses has been emptied this morning," ICANN chief Rod Beckstrom said at a Miami press conference.

"It is completely depleted. There are no more."

He brushed aside fears of modern life being devastated by an "IPocalypse," saying Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) worldwide will be doling out remaining addresses to support a shift to a bountiful new "IPv6" format.

"It is like running out of license plates," said Internet Architecture Board chairman Olaf Kolkman. "Driving on the road the next day would not change."

The touted solution to the problem is a switch to an "IPv6" format which allows trillions of Internet addresses, while the current IPv4 standard provides a meager four billion or so.

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.

"If an ISP (internet service provider) gets its act together, it shouldn't be a massive problem," Trefor Davies, chief operating officer of British ISP Timico, told AFP.

"We really should see this as an historic event," he continued. "The very nature of the Internet has changed with the transition."

Beckstrom expected the full switch to IPv6 to take years with potential overall costs in the billions of dollars, some of which could be factored into routine replacement of equipment.

"We are talking about billions of dollars here globally, not trillions of dollars," Beckstrom said.

Consumers, for the most part, should remain oblivious to the switch since complex IP numbers would still appear to them as words and domains, such as icann.org.

"My mother, my neighbor, my kids -- they should never notice," Kolkman said.

Some people might need to update routers or modems that connect computers to the Internet.

"All conditions are in place for a successful IPv6 transition," Beckstrom said. "The future of the Internet and the innovation it fosters lies within IPv6."

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.

With about seven billion people on the planet, the IPv4 protocol doesn't allow for everyone to have a gadget with its own online address.

The situation has been equated to not having enough telephone numbers for everyone.

The number of addresses that IPv6 allows for amounts to 340 "undecillion" (followed by 36 zeroes); enough for a trillion people to each be assigned trillions of IP numbers, according to Beckstrom.

IPv4 addresses were expected to run out first in Asia, where demand has been highest as people and businesses in emerging markets embrace online lifestyles.

Once RIRs run out of IPv4 addresses, they will turn to IPv6.

The formats have been likened to different languages, with translation needed for systems to handle both.

Computers and other gadgets that don't get the new format might have to start sharing instead of having unique identifying numbers.

"The Internet won't stop working; it will just slowly degrade," Google engineer Lorenzo Colitti said of not making the move to IPv6. "Things will get slower and flakier."

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 tires on it at a global scale and see if there are some unforeseen problems," Colitti said. "There is really a rallying cry element to it. No single player can do it alone; we need to work together."

World IPv6 Day will start at 0001 GMT on June 8.

Adoption of IPv6 is vital to preventing the Internet from becoming "balkanized" with localized addressing frameworks, according to Internet Society chief technology officer Leslie Daigle.

ISPs and networks worldwide have implemented IPv6 or plan to do so, Daigle said.

"It's only a matter of time before the RIRs and Internet Service Providers must start denying requests for IPv4 address space," said Raul Echeberría, chairman of the Number Resource Organization, an RIR umbrella group.

"Deploying IPv6 is now a requirement, not an option."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110203/ts_alt_afp/usitinternetsoftwareicann

Southern Belle
02-03-2011, 11:37 PM
:afraid:

DemonGeminiX
02-03-2011, 11:50 PM
Kinda reminds me of the very first time I filled up a hard drive. I was like, "that's so cool", then I went, "Ah, shit. I gotta go buy a bigger one now."

Teh One Who Knocks
02-03-2011, 11:58 PM
I'm pretty sure Comcast is ahead of the curve and has been working on upgrading to the IPv6 format :-k

Godfather
02-04-2011, 01:03 AM
I heard they held some dorky little ceremony to commemorate this :lol:

Hal-9000
02-04-2011, 01:25 AM
We have this routine for our license plates ...3 letters a dash and 3 numbers.When the province started growing,
they killed 4 million innocent people to open up new license plate numbers

:lol: Ok, maybe not..what they did was add 1 number.

IP addresses are what? an octet typically consisting of a possible 3 numbers/3 numbers/ 3 numbers/ 3 numbers? but most only use 2/3/3/2....so why not add another numeral or two to the possible range?

Noilly Pratt
02-04-2011, 01:47 AM
Hal

I took a course that predicted this...that was in 2000...and in 1995 they invented the IPv6 protocol. It'll give you 2 to the 128th power # of addresses to play with. Some devices are ready for it, some aren't (like VoIP I understand).

Here we go again...technology marches on.

Noilly Pratt
02-04-2011, 01:52 AM
I heard they held some dorky little ceremony to commemorate this :lol::woot::grouphug::grouphug::grouphug::grouphug : (4 octets of course)

Hal-9000
02-04-2011, 02:08 AM
Hal

I took a course that predicted this...that was in 2000...and in 1995 they invented the IPv6 protocol. It'll give you 2 to the 128th power # of addresses to play with. Some devices are ready for it, some aren't (like VoIP I understand).

Here we go again...technology marches on.

How could they predict this? With only about 7 1/2 billion people in the world :lol: / holding sarcasm key...

Is that what IPv6 is? Just a few more potential numeral spots in the IP range? Makes sense to me

Teh One Who Knocks
02-04-2011, 02:10 AM
How could they predict this? With only about 7 1/2 billion people in the world :lol: / holding sarcasm key...

Is that what IPv6 is? Just a few more potential numeral spots in the IP range? Makes sense to me

I believe that the IPv6 is a set of six numbers instead of 4 (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) :-k

Major Tool
02-04-2011, 03:21 AM
If all the addresses are taken, can I sublet mine to make a few extra bucks?

traveler
02-04-2011, 11:39 AM
I'm pretty sure Comcast is ahead of the curve and has been working on upgrading to the IPv6 format :-k

Bwahahahahahahahaha! You funneh.

Teh One Who Knocks
02-04-2011, 11:42 AM
Bwahahahahahahahaha! You funneh.

I use Comcast at home...never had an issue with them. Other than the piss-poor customer service, I can't complain about the technical side of everything. In the last 5 years I can count on 1 hand the number of times my phone/internet/cable has gone down.

RBP
02-04-2011, 12:06 PM
The Internet has run out of Internet addresses… sort of. Perhaps you’ve heard the news: the last blocks of IPv4 Internet addresses have been allocated. The fundamental underlying technology that has powered Internet Protocol addresses (ever seen a number like 99.48.227.227 on the web? That’s an IP address) since the Internet’s inception will soon be exhausted.

A new technology will take its place, though. IPv4′s successor is IPv6, a system that will not only offer far more numerical addresses, but will simplify address assignments and additional network security features.

The transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is likely to be rough, though. Most people are unfamiliar with IPv4 and IPv6, much less the potential impact the switch to IPv6 may have on their lives.

That’s why we’ve compiled this short guide to IPv4 and the eventual transition to IPv6. We explain the two versions of IP and why they matter. We also go into detail on what you can expect in the next few years as billions of websites, businesses and individuals make the switch to the new era of the Internet.
IPv4 & IPv6 Q&A

Q: What is IPv4?
A: IPv4 stands for Internet Protocol version 4. It is the underlying technology that makes it possible for us to connect our devices to the web. Whenever a device access the Internet (whether it’s a PC, Mac, smartphone or other device), it is assigned a unique, numerical IP address such as 99.48.227.227. To send data from one computer to another through the web, a data packet must be transferred across the network containing the IP addresses of both devices.

Without IP addresses, computers would not be able to communicate and send data to each other. It’s essential to the infrastructure of the web.

Q: What is IPv6?
A: IPv6 is the sixth revision to the Internet Protocol and the successor to IPv4. It functions similarly to IPv4 in that it provides the unique, numerical IP addresses necessary for Internet-enabled devices to communicate. However, it does sport one major difference: it utilizes 128-bit addresses. I’ll explain why this is important in a moment.

Q: Why are we running out of IPv4 addresses?
A: IPv4 uses 32 bits for its Internet addresses. That means it can support 2^32 IP addresses in total — around 4.29 billion. That may seem like a lot, but all 4.29 billion IP addresses have now been assigned to various institutions, leading to the crisis we face today.

Let’s be clear, though: we haven’t run out of addresses quite yet. Many of them are unused and in the hands of institutions like MIT and companies like Ford and IBM. More IPv4 addresses are available to be assigned and more will be traded or sold (since IPv4 addresses are now a scarce resource), but they will become a scarcer commodity over the next two years until it creates problem for the web.

Q: How does IPv6 solve this problem?
A: As previously stated, IPv6 utilizes 128-bit Internet addresses. Therefore, it can support 2^128 Internet addresses — 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0 of them to be exact. That’s a lot of addresses, so many that it requires a hexadecimal system to display the addresses. In other words, there are more than enough IPv6 addresses to keep the Internet operational for a very, very long time.

Q: So why don’t we just switch?
A: The depletion of IPv4 addresses was predicted years ago, so the switch has been in progress for the last decade. However, progress has been slow — only a small fraction of the web has switched over to the new protocol. In addition, IPv4 and IPv6 essentially run as parallel networks — exchanging data between these protocols requires special gateways.

To make the switch, software and routers will have to be changed to support the more advanced network. This will take time and money. The first real test of the IPv6 network will come on June 8, 2011, World IPv6 Day. Google, Facebook and other prominent web companies will test drive the IPv6 network to see what it can handle and what still needs to be done to get the world switched over to the new network.

Q: How will this affect me?
A: Initially, it won’t have a major impact on your life. Most operating systems actually support IPv6, including Mac OS X 10.2 and Windows XP SP 1. However, many routers and servers don’t support it, making a connection between a device with an IPv6 address to a router or server that only supports IPv4 impossible. IPv6 is also still in its infancy; it has a lot of bugs and security issues that still need to be fixed, which could result in one giant mess.

Nobody’s sure how much the transition will cost or how long it will take, but it has to be done in order for the web to function as it does today.

Teh One Who Knocks
02-04-2011, 12:09 PM
I have the newest mac daddy cable modem from Comcast...it's IPv6 ready :)

RBP
02-04-2011, 12:18 PM
Yeah I have no idea if my equipment is IPv6 compatible.

Teh One Who Knocks
02-04-2011, 12:20 PM
When they upgraded the speeds in Denver, I had to get a new modem because the old one wouldn't handle it. I asked about the IPv6 protocol and they said the new modem was compliant.

Jezter
02-05-2011, 08:43 AM
number.

IP addresses are what? an octet typically consisting of a possible 3 numbers/3 numbers/ 3 numbers/ 3 numbers? but most only use 2/3/3/2....so why not add another numeral or two to the possible range?
I know this can't be a serious question from you... especially that "most only use 2-3-3-2". Cuz you know that is not true at all.

Yeah I have no idea if my equipment is IPv6 compatible.
Should be if it isn't 10 years old. NIC's have handled it for years now and Window's has handled it...and your modem most likely does too, cuz this really isn't new news to the IT business we need the IPv6. That is so so much better than IPv6. Just the transition is going to be tough and the longer we wait, the tougher it gets.

Godfather
02-05-2011, 08:48 AM
01001111010011010100011100100000010010010101010000 10011101010011001000000101010001000101010010000010 00000100010101001110010001000010000001001111010001 10001000000101010001000101010010000010000001001001 01001110010101000101001001000001010011100100010101 0101000101101001011010

RBP
02-05-2011, 11:27 AM
01001111010011010100011100100000010010010101010000 10011101010011001000000101010001000101010010000010 00000100010101001110010001000010000001001111010001 10001000000101010001000101010010000010000001001001 01001110010101000101001001000001010011100100010101 0101000101101001011010

Damn Hippie Drunks! :x