Posted on 02/15/2011 5:43:09 PM PST by La Lydia
Who could have guessed that 4.3 billion Internet connections wouldn’t be enough? Certainly not Vint Cerf. In 1976, Mr. Cerf and his colleagues in the R.& D. office of the Defense Department had to make a judgment call: how much network address space should they allocate to an experiment connecting computers in an advanced data network?
They debated the question for more than a year. Finally, with a deadline looming, Mr. Cerf decided on a number — 4.3 billion separate network addresses, each one representing a connected device — that seemed to provide more room to grow than his experiment would ever require, far more, in fact, than he could ever imagine needing. And so he was comfortable rejecting the even larger number of addresses that some on his team had argued for.
“It was 1977,” Mr. Cerf said, in an interview last week. “We thought we were doing an experiment.”
“The problem was, the experiment never ended,” added Mr. Cerf, who is a former chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, a nonprofit corporation that coordinates the Internet naming system. “We had no idea it would turn into the world’s global communications network.”
Today, the Internet that Mr. Cerf helped create more than 30 years ago is about to max out. Within the next 12 to 18 months, or perhaps sooner, every one of the 4.3 billion Internet Protocol addresses will have been allocated, and the Internet, at least as it exists today, will have reached full capacity.
I.P. addresses are the unique sequence of numbers assigned to each Web site, computer, game console or smartphone connected to the Internet. They are distinct from domain names, which identify Web sites, like nytimes.com...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Wait!
I thought Gore invented the internet?
original democrat birthers and repub birthers growing..
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=263973
When I was in computer science school they issued the same dire predictions about running out in the next 12 months. I graduated 12 years ago and they still haven’t “run out”. Smart people have done a lot to mitigate this problem and stretch out the available IPv4 addresses. Not saying IPv6 is unnecessary, just don’t necessarily buy the timetables.
4.3 billion = 4 billion spammers and 300,000,000 actual users.
I have no idea. I hope you are right.
algore invented Globul Warming....
They’ve run out. The last batch was distributed last week. Now, there is no question that some are sitting on unused IP addresses, but there is no more to give out from the kitty.
They have a scheme based on a larger address space waiting in the wings. The current scheme is ipv4. The larger scheme is ipv6. Most of the equipment we have installed at our shop for the last 5 years has been ipv6 capable. I haven’t heard the strategy for switching protocols. It might get interesting for a while.
Also, don’t worry about connecting device to your home lan. It is most likely behind a firewall router and has a private address space. That router uses a protocol called Network Address Translation, NAT, to allow all the devices on your private lan to share the single internet IP address which has been provided by your ISP. Your router serves the function of a “bastion host” in firewall terms.
It’s like the Y2K problem that occurred. Remember that? It comes to this: too many companies have too much money riding on it to allow a sudden disaster when IPv4 addresses vanish.
I remember Bill Gates stating (back in the day) that the internet was just a fad and as soon as the novelty wore off, it (the internet) would fade into oblivion and that Microsoft was not interested. LOL! ;-)
I heard they “ran out” last week, as well. There really aren’t 4.3 addresses in use. The reason they “run out” is that they hand out the addresses in different sized chunks. Larger organizations need lots of contiguous addresses to make their internal lan management palatable. Small users were happy with fewer. Undoubtedly, a lot of the allocations are only partially used.
Now back in 1977, 4.3 billion IP addresses must have seemed like a lot. However, what is more amazing, that we've used up 4.3 billion addresses or the fact that if each of those IP addresses went on sale for $13.50 each, Bill Gates (net worth of $58 billion) would be able to afford to buy them all and have enough left over for a large meatball sub and a Coke.
If the federal govt wants one they can forget it, I aint sellin.
Here comes IPv6!
The last of the available IP addresses will be used by this fall (so they say). There are temporary measures that can help with the shortage. The real solution is to upgrade to IPv6. IPv6 allows for roughly 3.4 times 10 to the power of 38 IP addresses. Suffice it to say that IPv6 provides enough IP addresses.
Unfortunately, IPv6 isn't immediately compatible with older hardware. Underlying Internet technology needs to be upgraded. This requires time, effort and money. And most Internet firms seem to be putting off the upgrade. Less than 1 percent have made the switch.
Until your ISP upgrades, you can't access IPv6 Websites. June 8 is World IPv6 Day. Many major sites will enable IPv6 to test the system.
34.0.0.0/8 Halliburton Company
Each /8 block has 16 million addresses. Click above for the full list. Halliburton's not alone.
Back when the 8086, a sixteen-bit processor, was displacing the eight-bit 8080, I recall reading at least one industry pundit questioning the need for sixteen bits outside of mainframe computing. The moron pointed out that the main use of the eight-bit systems was word processing, and he asked, since characters are eight bits, where was the need for more?
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