Information technology experts are warning that unless action is taken we will run out of internet addresses - four number sequences that identify a device connected to the internet or a web site - within a year.
The current protocol, IPv4 allows for a maximum of 4 billion addresses. It was designed before personal computers and mobile phones became the norm and certainly before anyone anticipated that appliances such as fridges would one day be connected.
A replacement protocol, IPv6, is available but will be expensive to implement. ISPs and consumers will have to do significant software upgrades and in many cases replace hardware. Stop-gap solutions are likely to break many net applications.
as most computers and similar devices connect to the internet these days through a router, would it not be much simpler to:
1. Give all routers (devices with a direct connection to the internet) an IPv6 address. 2. Keep these routers assigning local devices (devices connected locally to said router) an IPv4 address.
Then, applications on home PCs would still work with IPv6, and only the router needs to worry about IPv4<->IPv6 translation.
The retarded shortsighted decision to assign 127.0.0.0 as your loopback address/subnet.
That alone literally WASTES over 16 Million IP addresses. Yes kiddies, that´s right, your home PC has 16 Million IP addresses, pinging 127.0.0.1 is exactly the same as pinging 127.254.254.254 - try it :)
Click Start ? Run ? Then Type “cmd” and press enter. In the Black box that pops up type "ping 127.0.0.1".
Loopback is used for more than just pinging your own computer. It was actually pretty smart to do that.
This same story comes up every few months on random sites. It still hasn´t happened yet because there is loads of address space. We still have the experimental subnet that we can tap into if needed.
Your idiots. Even windows 98 supported the IPV6 protocol. I know cause when it first came out it would break certain lan protocols with several games. Bush had nothing to do with this issue. IPV4 is older then I am, and IPV6 was around during the Clinton Era.
Apparently there are 2 billion of us online. Take into account the massive portion of that dont have their own computers, then take into account any actual house or business really only needs one IP address and what are we left with?
Even if fridges, toasters and kettles were plugged in they would be like anything else. I have four PC´s, a server, a 360, a PS3, a Wii, a tablet and ´stuff´ all running off of one connection ... so what is this scaremongering about? Afraid everyone in Asia is going to get their own connection overnight? On top of this it would mean everyone would need to be online at the same time. The only way my house can use 3 IP´s at a time would be to connect via the mobiles too.
From the source: "The explosion in the number of people, devices and web services on the internet means there are only about 232 million left"
So what they mean is there are only 232 million not allocated to any ISP.
There are probably a ton of ISP´s out there thinking "why did we pay to get 25 million when we only need 5?"
Also if my ISP´s head end server goes to IPv6 they can still run the rest of the network as IPv4 until everything is worked out.
Its my spell checker. I don´t have admin rights to hotelling PCs. So I´m using I.E. 6 and some crappy integrated spell checker that autocorrects any text box I type into (need admin rights to disable). Its annoying, like the predictive texting features on cellular phones. I have it disabled at my desk (and use a different browser), but most of the time I´m using a guest PC somewhere else (In fact I haven´t been at my desk for the past two weeks).
I did some research and found out he actually does own shares in a fund that does own part of the company that made the spell checker.
I also found out he´s worth less then 20 million total. Always thought he would be more of a rich bastard. Since you know, he raped most of the world for the financial gain of others.
Anyways it was in his 2007 public financial statement when he was still in office.
I know you can use the loopback for more than pinging yourself, hell if you look in your hosts file you´ll probably see the following line: "127.0.0.1 localhost"
But; C´mon, you don´t need 16 million different addresses to get back to yourself though. But even so… As Ixuzus already pointed out, those IPs will only go so far.
@In general On a more relevant note. There are ways to reduce the number of IPs people use. NATting for example. Even Microsoft’s Internet Connection Sharing allows one machine to act as a (software) router provided you have two NICs. This mimics (however basically these days) your routers function with one NIC on the Public network whilst ICS hands out 192.168.0.0 addresses to anything on the Private side. However, this isn´t anything your Router doesn´t already do and firewalls on the host machine “can” end up cocking things up. My advice, stick with a router.
I started typing something about subnetting but then thought better of it because it’ll take too long to explain and only the truly geeky would find it interesting (or would otherwise know what I’m on about). Sufficed to say; you can limit the number of workstations by borrowing from the client octet of an IP and gain yourself more addressable networks. This does reduce the number of clients you can have on any given subnet, but you don’t need a 24bit subnet with 254 addressable IPs for a site containing 10 machines.
There are definitely ways to stretch what we have but I´d hate to see them used as permanent solutions until this problem resurfaces. I think it´s probably time to bite the bullet and start transitioning it IPv6.
