Internet Runs Out of Addresses

It's finally happened. The Internet has run out of addresses.

What's that, you ask? How could the Internet be out of names? Isn't there any endless supply of weird domain names like PuppiesWithFreckles.com?

True, but a Web domain "name" is not the same as an "address." The address is a series of numbers known as an Ipv4 address, such as 172.16.254.1. Since you are unlikely to remember a series of numbers like that for every Website your visit, the people who designed the Internet came up with the name system. When you type in the name, it directs you to the Ipv4 address that it correlates to.

Fortunately, the organizations set up to manage the Internet around the world were well prepared for the exhaustion of the number combinations. At a news conference in Miami Thursday, the

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) joined the Number Resources Organization (NRO), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet Society in announcing that the pool of first generation Internet addresses has now been completely emptied. 

The final allocation of Internet addresses was administered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which is a function of ICANN.  

Major turning point

"This is a major turning point in the on-going development of the Internet," said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's president and Chief Executive Officer. "No one was caught off guard by this. The Internet technical community has been planning for IPv4 depletion for some time. But it means the adoption of IPv6 is now of paramount importance, since it will allow the Internet to continue its amazing growth and foster the global innovation we've all come to expect." 

The new Internet protocol, IPv6, will open up a pool of Internet addresses that is a billion-trillion times larger than the total pool of IPv4 addresses (about 4.3 billion), which means the number of IPv6 addresses is virtually inexhaustible for the foreseeable future.

Two "blocks" of the dwindling number of IPv4 addresses, about 33 million of them, were allocated earlier this week to the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for the Asia Pacific region. When that happened, it meant the pool of IPv4 addresses had been depleted to a point where a global policy was triggered to immediately allocate the remaining small pool of addresses equally among the five global Regional Internet Registries.

The RIRs are independent, not-for-profit organizations that provide technical coordination for the infrastructure of the Internet. Those last five blocks of IPv4 addresses were allocated to the five RIRs during a ceremony Thursday morning in Miami during a meeting of the Regional Internet Registries. 

Last shipment

The allocation of the final IPv4 addresses is analogous to the last crates of a product leaving a manufacturing warehouse and going to the regional stores or distributions centers, where they can still be distributed to the public. Once they are gone, the supply is exhausted. In this case, the RIRs will distribute the last IPv4 addresses to Internet Service Providers, universities, governments, telecommunications companies and other enterprises. 

"It's only a matter of time before the RIRs and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must start denying requests for IPv4 address space," said Raúl Echeberría, Chairman of the Number Resources Organization, the umbrella organization of the five RIRs. "Deploying IPv6 is now a requirement, not an option.

For consumers, the transition should be seamless. You'll still type in the domain name to get to the site you want to visit. Companies that operate Websites, meanwhile, will reconfigure their servers to support the new standard, without having to upgrade hardware.