In less than a year, the world could run out of Internet addresses unless we change the system. The old system simply did not account for the number of IP addresses that phones would use.
The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia reports:
“The explosion in the number of people, devices and web services on the internet means there are only about 232 million left. This allocation is set to be exhausted in about 340 days.”
Of course there is a solution, something called IPv6, but it would be costly, and some compare it to changing your car tires while driving. India recently issued a mandate for all government and “public sector companies” to move to IPv6 by 2012.
The Internet probably won’t come crashing down because of all of this. Some critics compare it to the Y2K scare, something that will be fixed when it has to be. We have faced similar situations with the depletion of phone numbers, which was solved by adding new area codes and allowing numbers to be portable.
