Posted: 27th Oct, 2003 By: MarkJ
Everybody that connects to the Internet is assigned an Internet Protocol (IP) number (e.g: 125.210.3.192). There are some four billion such numbers available, yet they're expected to run out come the year 2005:
A taskforce of experts hope to solve the problem by creating what is called IPv6 (128Bit) and would provide 64 billion extra IP addresses.
The current version of IP addresses is called IPv4. It was designed in the 1980s and has about four billion possible combinations. Once they have been used up, that is it. "I don't think people anticipated that we would have quite the utilisation that we have today," said Phillip Benchoff, a computer network engineer at Virginia Tech in the US.
The IPv6 standard will bring sweeping improvements. Soon you will be able to send specific instructions to the device of our choice, anywhere in the world, with added security and reliability.It's a pity the
BBC News Online item doesn't touch on the problem of slow adoption for IPv6 around the world. Like it or not, ISPs, Telco's and network managers will have to deal with the problem sooner rather than later.