Internet is running out of IP addresses
Launched in 1983 as an experiment, the Internet has spiraled out of “control” and grew at an extremely fast pace into the something nobody at that time could have imagined. A true cradle for creativity and free speech… and cats … and trolls, the internet has literally changed the way we live our lives or run our businesses .
At it’s core, the net required each computer to be assigned a specific IP address, to correctly identify how computer interact with each other in this vast network of interlinked machines. This was solved through IP addresses, IPv4 to be more precise, which would account for 2^32 addresses or 4.3 billion IPs. An insane number, right? Not at all.
Zoom to 2012, were we have more than 5.5 mobile phone users alone, not to mention the innumerable new websites that spring like mushrooms after rain (looking at you, spammers!) so you’d imagine we kind of need a wee bit more IPs if we want Internet to grow, expand and evolve the way it has until now.
- IPv6 Logo
The “wee bit more” IPs turn out to be more than 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses in the form of IPv6 which will look like this: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
Google, ISPs and even hardware manufacturers will permanently switch to the new IP form, but will run in parallel with IPv4 until full implementation. You might need to upgrade or update your home routers to support the new IPs.
Join the future!
Tags: computer address, internet address, internet development, internet evolution, Internet expansion, Internet growth, Internet Protocol, IP, IP change, IPv4, IPv6, website address, website IP
