Internet addresses to run out by 2011

Friday, 14 August 2009 12:00 AM

Report calls for all network operators to upgrade to the new IPv6 Internet addressing scheme.

Experts have warned that internet addresses based on the current scheme (IPv4) will run out in 2011 or by early 2012, according to a report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The OECD is a forum where the governments of thirty democracies collaborate to address the economic, social and environmental challenges of globalisation.

In their annual Communications Outlook report, the OECD has found that while growth in broadband subscriptions have fuelled the expansion of the internet, it also represents a downside. Global internet hosts grew 33% to reach 540 million in January 2008 but over half of all hosts (287 million) had a generic top-level domain rather than one tied to a country code.

“This growth in the number of networks, and devices attached to those networks has led to a shortage of unique Internet addresses used to identify individual devices connected to the Internet. As a result, there is a need for all network operators to upgrade to a new Internet addressing scheme, Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6),” the report states.

IPv4 addresses are capped at a maximum of 2^32 (a little more than four billion) unique addresses, while the next evolution IPv6 allows for 2^128, which will accommodate the rapid expansion of the internet over the coming years.

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Posted by: Balzer Sunday, 16 August 2009 11:11 AM[UAE] - US

AndrewG, Thanks for spotting my error. You are correct that each part of the IP(V4) address can be from 0-255 (0 through 2^8) and it is in decimal form. Jebel Ali Baba, thanks for pointing out that this applies only to fixed IP addresses, as many devices (even some www.domain-names) share a common IP address. With V6, it should be possible to assign each device and domain name to a unique IP. That may or may not be a blessing.

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Posted by: Vineetha Menon Sunday, 16 August 2009 10:49 AM[UAE]

Thanks for your comments - the article has now been modified to correct factual errors.

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Posted by: Walid Sunday, 16 August 2009 10:36 AM[UAE]

The example IP can't have a number bigger than 254 so 167.982.0.0 is invalid

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Posted by: Jebel Ali Baba Saturday, 15 August 2009 3:48 PM[UAE] - UAE

And one has to consider that many online devices like cameras, mobile phones aso. also use IP addresses. So the IPv4 address spave is really small. BTW: Nobody can exactly tell how many servers or computers are online in the Internet. The only exact figure which is known are domains linked to fixed IP addresses.

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Posted by: AndrewG Saturday, 15 August 2009 10:12 AM[UAE] - Saudi Arabia

Balzer - each part of the IP address has 2^8 (256) unique values i.e. from 0 to 255. There are 4 parts to the address, therefore total number of unique values is 2^32 (4,294,967,296) unique values as stated by Larry. Any number between 0 and 255 is permissible for each part, therefore both the given example (982) and your example (772) are not permissable. However valuies containing the digity 8 or 9 are acceptable e.g. 189.

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