Cyberspace is infinite and we will never have to worry about running out of Internet-related resources, right?
Wrong.
Every single device that connects to the Internet must be identified by a unique IP (Internet Protocol) address. Since the web was first born in the late 1970s, we’ve been using Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), which has the capacity for 4.3 billion IP addresses. But when this was first established, the World Wide Web was seen as nothing more than a way to support government networks and academic research.
Today, everyone is connected – and not just through computers. Cell phones, tablets, cameras, Blu-Ray players, televisions, thermostats, even some coffee makers – anything that connects to the Internet must have its own unique IP address.
So while it seemed like a lot at the time, the 4.3 billion IP addresses are rapidly running out.
We can’t just stop adding devices, so what can we do to deal with this dwindling resource? There is a new system available– IPv6 – that can handle up to 340 trillion, trillion, trillion, or 340 undecillion, new IP addresses. That’s 340 followed by 36 zeros.
If a company does not get up to speed as far as migrating to IPv6, this could mean an inability to access certain websites, and the number of these sites would just keep increasing.
According to Steven Barry, director of IT for the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), we will need to make some changes within the next few months.
“The predictions are that by this summer we will have to either reengineer a solution, augment the engineering solutions that we have or start migrating high-traffic-use scenarios to IPv6 to alleviate the congestion,” Barry told Business in Vancouver.
He said the original projections were for the Internet to have run out of IP addresses by 2008.
“That obviously didn’t happen but it’s only by engineering progressively different solutions that we haven’t.”
Barry gave the example of Google Maps as one area in which creative engineering solutions were put in place to reduce the number of IP addresses needed. The way this site used to work was that each square representing an area on the map had its own IP address. Now Google Maps uses something called network address translation – or “natting” – to make all squares come in one IP address as a train.
This workaround isn’t perfect, however. While this cuts down on the number of addresses needed, he said, it causes a congestion of data on existing addresses.
This type of creative solution has helped keep us “limping along,” Barry said, as realistically we should have run out of addresses long ago.
“The current engineered solutions are coming to their end of life.”
What does this mean to individual businesses?
It is up to individual service providers to keep on top of this problem, and Barry said the good news is a lot are already dealing with it. This doesn’t mean, however, that all companies won’t face problems relating to this issue.
“If [what you have] is as simple as a website and an email, you’re fine if your service provider is IPv6 compliant,” he said.
“If you are running any internal IT, even if it’s something as simple as accountancy, you may have an update to make. However, if you are keeping current with the operating systems and the applications and the hardware, you should be IPv6-compliant out of the box these days.”
The key is for businesses to be aware of this issue.
“If you are a small business who is approaching this problem for the first time and you are unaware of your service provider’s ability to serve IPv6, you would have to likely engage an outside authority or consultant to come in and give you an understanding of what steps need to be taken.”
These steps come at a price. There may be a capital expense associated with replacing equipment, and if a company does have to change service providers, this could cause a business disruption.
Thirty years ago, 4.3 billion seemed like a more-than-adequate number of IP addresses. So the question is: will the 340 trillion, trillion, trillion IP addresses available through IPv6 end up being enough?
