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Last Updated: Sunday, 26 October, 2003, 01:45 GMT
Tackling the net's numbers shortage

IP addresses are set to run out in 2005



A taskforce of experts hope to solve the problem by creating what is called IPv6 and would provide billions of extra IP addresses.

Dwindling numbers

Anyone who logs onto the internet will automatically receive an IP address. It is made up of four sets of numbers, each separated by a dot.

Each of these decimal numbers falls between 1 and 255 and represents a binary code that the machine understands.

This is how computers identify each other.

"Just as you can't call someone without having their telephone number to tell the telephone system how to route your call," explains Perry Metzger, from the IPv6 Task Force, "every computer on the internet gets something called an IP address, which is almost exactly like a phone number."

The current version of IP addresses is called IPv4. It was designed in the 1980s and has about four billion possible combinations.

Once they have been used up, that is it.

"I don't think people anticipated that we would have quite the utilisation that we have today," said Phillip Benchoff, a computer network engineer at Virginia Tech in the US.




We could assign IP addresses to every grain of sand in the Sahara and still have extra
Matthew Sarrel, Technical Director, PC Magazine Labs




That is why the world needs an upgrade from 32 bit IPv4 addresses to 128 bit IPv6 within a matter of a few years.


"We could assign IP addresses to every grain of sand in the Sahara and still have extra," said Mr Sarrel.

The IPv6 standard will bring sweeping improvements. Soon you will be able to send specific instructions to the device of your choice, anywhere in the world, with added security and reliability.

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