The Gift of Understatement
Paul Hsieh on the new version six of the Internet Protocol:
The new IPv6 internet naming and number protocol will make it possible for every person (or device) on Earth to have their own IP address.
Well, er, yeah...and then some. The linked article repeats the same modest claim before getting to heart of the matter:
Vinton Cerf of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said the next-generation protocol, IPv6, had been added to its root server systems, making it possible for every person or device to have an Internet protocol address.
Cerf said about two-thirds of the 4.3 billion Internet addresses currently available were used up, adding that IPv6 could magnify capacity by some "25,000 trillion trillion times."
I heard our friend Alex Lightman talking about this a while back. He estimates that IPv6 will provide enough IP addresses so that every atom in the known universe can have one.
Now that oughta hold us for a while.
Original Comments
Does the address contain permutations of every number and letter in the alphabet? Does this repeat within each section of the address? I drive along the road trying to figure out the patterns of auto license plates and such, but I never did any math study that "addressed" how long it takes to run out of these patterns. I'd love to hear from people who know...
Posted by: Kathy Hanson at July 22, 2004 05:49 PM
Not long back I heard that we are running out of phone numbers. A four digit area code would help for awhile, but even that wouldn't be enough in a few years.
I speculate that in the near future our IP address(es) will replace phone numbers as telephones become just another internet device.
Posted by: Stephen Gordon at July 22, 2004 09:16 AM