The Internet neighbourhood is about full. In the next few weeks, the last available IP addresses for the IPv4 system will be allocated. When it all started, nobody dreamed that it would reach this point. So what now?
In case you don't know, every computer connected to a network has an address. Just like your house has an address, so to does your computer. It's called an IP address. Now if you are never going to connect to the Internet, all is good. You can use your own private range of IP addresses for the computers on your network. But as soon as your computer, or your router connects to the Internet, then it needs an address all of it's own that is unique to the entire Internet world. So how does that happen.
In most cases, you probably use one of many Internet Service Providers available in your country. Each of these ISP's are given a range of IP addresses to use for their clients. The bigger customer base the ISP has, the more IP addresses they need. And now, it is not only your PC that requires an IP address. Your smartphone, your iPad and the list goes on. With the IPv4 system, you can have 4.3 billion addresses. These are the addresses that are about to be exhusted.
The solution has already been found. A new system called IPv6 has been available for a considerable time. Those better at math than me tell me that there are 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 unique addresses available with this new system. I am not going to say that we will never run out, but it really does give us quite a bit of 'breathing space'! So why the concern?
Funny thing is, many organisations, ISP's and maybe you have not adopted the new system. So we wait until it breaks to fix it. That is why articles like the one entitled "Google's guru puts the case for IPv6" have been in the press lately to get everyone in the industry thinking about this and more importantly, doing something to get it sorted.
What can you do? If you are the 'end user' the first thing is to check that your gateway or router, the point of entry to the Internet is IPv6 capable. So too with your firewall. The next big step is beyond your control. Your ISP needs to upgrade their networking equipment to support IPv6.
Talk to your IT support team now so that your business is not left out in the cold when the change finally is implemented. In an effort to determine your readiness for the change (and your ISP's readiness) try this test.
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After spending more than thirty five years in Information Technology, the whole industry still delights, amazes and frustrates me like nothing else. -