A while back, ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, put out a resolution saying that we’re running out of IP addresses using the IPv4 protocol. The next technology, IPv6, has been developed, but like with any big infrastructure switch, the cost of getting internet users onto the new system is a little offputting. But it came to light that Comcast would be switching customers over to IPv6 addresses next year.
IPv4 addresses are of a 32-bit address size, which allows for 4.3 billion addresses, and we’re almost out of these. IPv6 goes up to a number which I don’t even think we have a word for - 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 total possible addresses. So we’re not going to exhaust IPv6 anytime soon, lest we expand to some sort of trans-universal internet in the next million years.
The switch will not kill all the old IPv4 addresses, but will rather keep them working for a while until IPv6 is fully in place. That’s pretty much essential as not supporting both until the transition is complete would make for some bizarre internet segregation, and we certainly don’t need that.
