In an opinion piece in The Southland Times, Jillian Allison-Aitken writes about Vincent Cerf, the “father of the internet”, and the fast-approaching end of available IP addresses.
A new improved technology, the IPv6 protocol (as opposed to the current IPv4), will open up trillions more addresses, but adoption has proved less fast than many hoped.
An excerpt: (read in full here)
“Vint Cerf was one of the people at the forefront of web technology and in 1977 came up with an experiment that connected computers all over the world.
“The problem is the experiment never ended and here we are, 34 years later, with nearly all the 4 billion-ish available addresses in use.
“The IPv4 protocol, which is what gets us all Googling, tweeting and searching the porn sites, provides numbered IP addresses that allow our computers to talk to others. Since 1977, the number of web users has exploded and now there are just a few million IP addresses left.
“Fortunately, there is hope on the horizon in the form of IPv6 – a new, improved technology that the experts say will offer trillions of addresses.”