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'Web will run out of IP addresses by 2010'
By siliconindia
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Monday, 29 September 2008, 17:07 IST |
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London: After 'internet going to collapse' hit the headlines, now father of Internet Vint Cerf is warning that the web will run out of internet protocol (IP) addresses by 2010. According to the U.S. computer scientist, the web did not have enough unique codes that allow computers to communicate with each other.
"This is like the Internet running out of telephone numbers and with no new numbers, you can't have more subscribers," Daily Telegraph quoted Cerf, who is also a Vice-President of Google, as saying.
The computer scientists, who helped invent the system, called for early preparations to switch addresses to a new system.
When the Internet was developed in 1977 there were 4.2 billion addresses available under the Internet Protocol version four (IPv4) system.
Each of the IPv4 addresses has a series of 32 binary numbers, but with the surge of broadband globally, it is estimated that these addresses will run out by 2010.
A new system called IPv6 has been ready for a decade and is already used in Japan to connect thousands of earthquake sensors through a computer system that sends automatic alerts to television program and turns traffic lights red, the report said. IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long.