Are We There Yet?

Many will remember the commercial that depicted someone reaching for the 揈nd of the Internet,?and while this commercial was a joke at the time, the real end of the internet recently became a major issue. As of February 3, 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) announced that the central pool of available addresses of Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) has been depleted. That抯 it, the end of the Internet, but don抰 panic-well, not yet, anyway. There is a plan to move to the next stage of growth represented by Internet Protocol version 6, also known as Ipv6, and most users will not even feel the effects, but the world will.

The Past and Future Internet

IPv4 is the addressing system that results in numbers like ?92.168.100.100,?which are the 損hone numbers?of computers, phones, and websites, their IP addresses and anything that connects to the internet receives one. The system allows for 4.3 billion total addresses, and the central pool is depleted, meaning that the large blocks of addresses that ISP own are all assigned out. The new system IPv6 offers many more IP addresses, 340 Undecillion addresses, which is 2 to the power of 128 addresses-many orders of magnitude greater than a trillion.

An IPv6 address is hexadecimal based, meaning it uses a number system having 16 digits rather than 10. An example of an IPv6 address would be ?001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334.?This number system includes the letters A through F to represent digits higher than nine. In addition to the vast increase in total addresses, the system, which has been under development for years, offers significant improvements in networking efficiency and security-the latter is a major issue facing ISP's and mobile carriers as the Internet explodes.

Are We There Yet?

No, but soon, the new systems will begin to take control. For the most part, ordinary users will not take notice of the transition and anyone using a computer with at least Windows XP, any Linux operating system, or an Apple-based OS is ready, since these systems are already ready for IPv6. Almost all smartphones are also IPv6 ready. Major changes will be on the national and international level as ISPs and IAPs switch from the old system to the new, and networking technologies begin reflecting the new scheme.

There could be cases where users with very old systems begin to have trouble accessing websites. For example, websites that use only IPv6 systems are not 揷ompatible?with computers using only the IPv4, but this is expected to be a rare exception to the rule. The US government recently announced a major investment of $20 billion to expand the mobile Internet infrastructure in the U.S. to include 98 percent of the population. Private corporations are already moving to implement new hardware to accommodate the new system.

So how many is an Undecillion? Starting with trillion, comes Quadrillion, Quintillion, Sextillion, Septillion, Octillion, Nonillion, Decillion, and then Undecillion. Will we run out of addresses again? Not any time soon. That's a number so high that not even the U.S. federal budget could reach it (probably). On June 8 2011, the Internet Society will hold World IPv6 Day, a global 24 hour test with other big companies and organizations to test the new system and determine how many may be left in the cold with IPv4.