By Kelly Wakefield
Two historic dates have past within the last year, October 2009 saw the 40th birthday of the Internet and in March 2010 the Internet celebrated the 25th anniversary of the first registered dotcom name (Symbolics Computers, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA). The Internet and the world wide web significantly changed the 20th century, facilitating technologies such as email with commercial users of the Internet only outnumbering academics in the mid 1990s.
A recent BBC news article suggested that within 18 months there will be no more large blocks of IP addresses obtainable (everything connected to the Internet needs an IP address). There are around 300 million IP addresses left to assign, with the entire pool expected to be depleted by 2012. There is however, a successor to the current IPv4 scheme, the IPv6, which has trillions of IP addresses to distribute. Less than 1% of the Internet’s top one million websites currently run IPv6, with China one of the biggest users. Nevertheless, there is a fear that unless more ISP (Internet Service Providers) adopt the newest version, delays could start to hit general web browsing. A lack of consumer knowledge, interest or pressure is not giving businesses compelling reasons to switch, despite the looming deadline.
BBC article – Celebrating 40 years of the net
USA Today article – IP address shortage to limit Internet access