The Internet is going to run out of IP addresses in one year. That is what John Curran, President and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers, and Vint Cerf, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, are saying. The 32-bit IPv4 system currently in use is limited to just over 4 billion unique addresses. With the explosion of mobile devices, internet aware products, and 4G integrated technologies the IPv4 system has a mere 234.37 million addresses left for allocation. The next generation IP address protocol — IPv6 — is a full 128-bits, and has enough allocatable addresses to provide “every person on the planet [with] over 4 billion addresses.” The move to IPv6 has been slow, however larger companies like Google and Facebook have already started implementing the new protocol. Some companies are claiming this impending IPcalypse is merely the next Y2K type scare, and 10 years from now we will still be using IPv4. What do you think? Hit the jump to watch Google’s Vint Cerf — a man who, to us, looks like The Architect from The Matrix — explain why he is concerned.
