Imagine buying a home, but the realtor explains that you have to share a phone number with your neighbor.
Unfortunately, all digit combinations in the traditional 10-digit system have been used, and in the meantime, you have to share a phone line, which wouldn’t be so bad, but your neighbor gets a lot of calls. It becomes nearly impossible for you to get a word in edgewise.
This may be the future of the Internet.
In the same way that the United States used to be on a six-digit system that quickly filled up, the Internet is a 32-digit system, called IPv4, and it’s full.
It works like this: Every time a computer accesses the Internet, it does so with an Internet protocol, or as they are more commonly referred to, IP addresses. Without them, computers cannot communicate with one another.
Every computer generally does this with a unique series of number, like 64.106.114.186.
In turn, these addresses are assigned by Internet service providers, ISP, and generally there are enough IPs. However, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said Feb. 3 that of at least 4 billion possible IP addresses, all of them had been assigned.
Rod Beckstrom, ICANN’s president ad chief executive officer, said in a news release that this is a major turning point in the Internet’s ongoing development.
“No one was caught off guard by this,” he said. “The Internet technical community has been planning for IPv4 depletion for some time.”
A bit of clarification: ICANN assigns IPs to ISPs.
Some places like Stanford University have more IPs than China.
Vanessa Baca, spokesperson for UNM’s IT department, said UNM has 100,000 IPs. Some 55,000 are in use at any given time.
“The University is not in an emergency situation in terms of IP address shortages at this time,” she said.
But there’s no reason it will remain that way. When the IP addresses system was developed in the 70s, there was no reason to suspect that four billion addresses wouldn’t be enough, but that was before the emergence of wireless technologies that connect to the Internet beyond computers.
Smart phones, game systems, printers, televisions and even some cars all can connect to the Internet and each, under current standards of operations, requires its own IP addresses. Throw in the fact that most Americans own at least several wireless devices, and it’s easy to see that 4 billion addresses won’t cut it.
But there is a solution, and it functions in the same way as adding an extra digit, but in the case of the Internet connection, you add 96 of them.
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“The new Internet protocol, IPv6, will open up a pool of Internet addresses that is a billion-trillion times larger than the total pool of IPv4 addresses (about 4.3 billion),” Beckstrom said. “Which means the number of IPv6 addresses is virtually inexhaustible for the foreseeable future.”
The new IPv6 will operate off a 128-digit system, and most current wireless devices have the capacity to run on it. However, switching to the new system will cost ISPs a hefty amount of cash.
“UNM plans to transition to IPv6 sometime in the near future,” Baca said. “As the University is in a budget shortfall situation, however, it is not certain when the transition to IPv6 will happen.”
The switch requires a shift in formatting and the way the Internet is accessed.
Think about it again with the phone metaphor. The switch from six to seven digits required one extra number for every phone call made, but the new Internet system will require computers to locate another 96 additional digits.
Granted, this problem is easily solved with software that automatically locates IPs, and the change to get there is drastic but necessary, Baca said.
“The expected transition to IPv6 will also contribute to UNM maintaining a high level of consistent, readily available network performance,” she said.
