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Is Web running out of addresses?

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CIOL Bureau
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LONDON, UK: The European Commission recently said that businesses urgently need to upgrade to IPv6, a new version of the Internet's addressing protocol that would increase the number of available addresses.

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A survey commissioned by the Commission found that few organizations across Europe are prepared for the switch from the current naming protocol, Ipv4, to IPv6, the new version of the Internet's addressing protocol, said The Telegraph.

Of the 610 government, educational and other industry organizations surveyed throughout Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, only 17 per cent had upgraded to IPv6.

Web experts have warned that we could run out of Internet addresses within the next two years unless more companies migrate to the new platform.

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While the IPv4 protocol uses 32-bit addresses, which enables the web to support around 4.3 billion unique addresses, IPv6 uses 128-bit web addresses, creating billions of possible new web addresses.

"In the last 10 years, the Internet has become hugely important worldwide from a socio-economic perspective," the report quoted Detlef Eckert, a director in the Commission's information society and media directorate-general as saying.

"Only by ensuring that all devices connected to the Internet are compatible with IPv6 can we stay connected and safeguard sustainable growth of the Internet and the global digital economy, now and in the years to come."

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