Internet out of space? Development of the next generation of Internet addresses needs to speed up, academic warns
Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - 22:30
in Mathematics & Economics
As the original Internet address system reaches its end, an academic warns that deployment of the next generation of addresses needs to speed up to maintain Internet services. With the Internet likely to reach a major milestone this Thursday at 3 pm, when the very last Internet addresses using the original Internet protocol, called IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) are allocated to Regional Registries and ISPs, computer scientists say that careful planning by developers and engineers, dating back to the mid-1990s, has provided the capability for the Internet to continue to grow beyond the depletion of the original addressing system.