Addressing the issue
Dubbed the ‘godfather of the net' Vint Cerf has warned that Europe could run out of new web addresses as early as Spring of next year, potentially hampering growth prospects.
The VP of Google warned the capacity problem could cut the UK off from the rest of the world and the shortage of web addresses presents a ‘serious boundary' to the growth of the worldwide web, The Guardian reported.
He reportedly called the problem one of the "biggest set of changes in the history of the internet".
To be more specific, he said the space for IPv4 addresses which were standardised in 1996 (upon which most of the internet in Europe is based) is running out, with space for a maximum of 4bn internet addresses. It is thought the remaining 4 percent of IPv4 addresses will be used up by spring of 2011.
However, Cerf reportedly said the new IPv6 can hold ‘340 trillion trillion trillion' addresses, "so the theory is we won't run out, at least not until after I'm dead."
Cerf is said to have joined the 6UK campaign group in urging businesses to adopt IPv6 pronto.
"There's no question we're going to be out of address space by springtime of 2011. If nobody does anything then the internet will simply stop expanding," he reportedly said.
"You need to be able to talk to everyone in the world [who] is on the internet. If Europe doesn't implement IPv6, it won't be able to talk to the rest of the world that does implement IPv6 - that's stupid, and we don't want people here to be stupid," he added.
Cerf reportedly issued the bleak warning ahead of the launch of the 6UK campaign.
"The biggest set of changes in the history of the internet is happening today," he said. "The change in the address space, the change in domain name languages, the introduction of digital signatures in the domain name system, the introduction of end-to-end cryptography in accessing internet-based services. This is a huge change in the net," he reportedly said.
