By Barry Levine | July 23, 2010 | Top Tech News
Experts are warning that the current 4.5 billion Internet addresses under IPv4 isn’t enough and could run out next year. With an explosion of connected devices worldwide, demand for Internet addresses is rising. A newer technology, IPv6, could provide a lot more addresses using 128 bits, but it has not been fully implemented.
To the list of dwindling worldwide resources add Internet addresses. According to experts, the nearly 4.5 billion current addresses aren’t enough, only six percent of available addresses are left, and the Internet will run out of addresses by sometime late next year.
Three main factors are behind the upcoming shortage. One is the explosion in web access from multiple devices for each user, primarily in developed countries. Each of those smartphones, laptops, tablets, desktops and other devices that access the web require a different IP, or Internet protocol, address. And the demand for device addresses is increasing rapidly, with TVs, game consoles, even automobiles offering web-browsing capability.