Is really Internet running out?

The discussions about the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 has started for some time now, actually there have been some years already that planning is made. Why? IPv4 is the 4th version of Internet protocol actually managing the IP addresses which can be 255 digits long and this has a certain capacity: 4 billion addresses can be used!

For someone this figure looks amazing, and maybe large enough to say: exaggeration! No it is not an exaggeration if you think the number of different electronic devices that we use daily all of them connected on the Internet.


Think of cellular phones,  personal computers, servers, imagine proxy servers, hosting sites, etc by now believe it or not the aforementioned capacity of 4 billion addressed has been reached and if it is not the case for the current year, the coming year it will become a certainty, reaching or even more exceeding the limit for the current addressing system IPv4.

And this is where IPv6 is introduced in order to solve the "problem", where a gradual transition period will exist, having IPv4 operating as it does right now, together with IPv6 in parallel  operating as well.

And maybe you wonder: ok, what is so special about IPv6 and there is need to have it? The answer is that IPv6 can handle 340 trillion trillion trillion (or, 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) addresses! Amazing?

For more details about IPv6 follow the Google overview about IPv6.