The Internet Has Run Out of IP Addresses? Lets Explore The Options
The Internet has reached a crisis point, and no, I’m not talking about America’s fight with Net Neutrality, China’s great firewall, the censorship in Egypt, or any of the other localized crises. I’m talking about the crisis of IP addresses, one you’ve probably not heard about.
First, let’s start with the basic information to catch you up to speed, in case you’re not totally aware of the problem already.
What is an IP address? It’s a number that is required to use the Internet. Your computer has one when you connect, and every server you visit – every web page – has one. You never see either of them unless you’re troubleshooting or looking to use it for some reason, though. That’s because of DNS.
DNS is the Domain Name System. It’s essentially a massive database that associates every domain name with an IP address. When you type in www.google.com, DNS looks up what IP address that associates with, and sends your browser to that IP address to look up the server and pull data. Now, Google – and most large websites – has more than one IP address. In fact, they have quite a number of them.
An IP address is a string of characters. There are currently two different formats for these addresses; IPv4 and IPv6.
Fri, 16 May 2025 05:37:00 GMT Finally, some legacy applications developed with IPv4 assumptions in mind (such as storing dotted-decimal IP addresses or using IPv4-specific APIs) may need rewriting to work with IPv6 addresses ...
Wed, 11 Dec 2024 16:00:00 GMT IPv6 has been in the works since 1998 to address the shortfall of IP addresses available under Ipv4, yet despite its efficiency and security advantages, adoption is still slow.
Thu, 29 Aug 2024 10:02:00 GMT IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) was deployed in 1999 concerning that the demand for IP addresses would exceed the available supply. It allows communication and data transfer to take place over ...
Wed, 28 Aug 2024 17:00:00 GMT IPv4 to IPv6 shift: Key security improvements and challenges. Skip to main content Open menu ... IPv6 is a 128-bit IP address which supports 2^128 Internet addresses in total.
Mon, 24 Jun 2024 17:00:00 GMT And here is how: The IP address 127.128.165.255 equals 01111111100000001010010111111111. If you count the number of bits, it equals 32. Therefore any IPv4 address is ...
