Internet running out of Addresses (IP's) !!
We all love estimates and surveys, and this one sure is scary. According to Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development', the web would run out of addresses allocated under the IPv4 would be exhausted by 2011 (or in 2010). Here the addresses don't refer to the domain names (like onlygizmos.com) but the IP address assigned to every domain name. (for example Google.com IP is 209.85.129.99 ). Similarly every website on the Internet is identified by an IP address.
So while we have enough domain names and extensions (like .in .co.in .org .net etc), the number of IP address that can be allocated is limited. The only alternative is to switch to a new IPv6 scheme before the IPv4 runs out of steam.
The 32-bit IPv4 address space allows for a theoretical 4.2 billion IP addresses. A 128-bit IPv6 address scheme allows for 2E128 addresses, or "340 billion billion billion billion" addresses. But neither scheme is compatible with the other, making the transition an extremely complicated matter. - PCmag
The transition to IPv6 is a tricky issue with networking hardware and your OS's requiring an upgrade to support the new scheme. This would mean that everyone including your ISP's would require a system upgrade, which is certainly a complicated and time consuming process. Countries like Germany, Japan, Australia and France lead in the deployment of the IPv6 system, while others are yet to catch up.
[ag: internet ip ipv4 ipv6]
