8
the Etownian
campus life
February 24, 2011
Thomas R. O’Connell Staff Writer
April 2012 may be the beginning of the end for the Internet. The IANA, which stands for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, handed out two of the last big batches of IP addresses this past May. According to Dan Misener of CBC news, an IP address is a specific number that is assigned to every device that connects to the Internet. The purpose of an IP address is to be certain that information gets sent to the right person or device. Basically, the net is running out of space. The system the Internet uses now, known as IPv4, was originally designed to be able to house roughly four billion IP addresses, according to Mark Ward of BBC news. Today, many people are connected to the Internet in more than one way. It is not uncommon for a person to have a home computer, a laptop and a cell phone with Internet connection. All three of these devices have their own IP addresses. There are many other devices that have IP addresses, and everyday companies like Apple are trying to think up and create the newest and best gadget. Since the trend nowadays is to constantly be in touch with what is going on in the world through Internet access, that gadget must have an IP address. So as you can see, this poses a problem. “It is crazy how the way we use the Internet has grown in such a short time,” sophomore and computer science major Ben Cable said. “I can really see this lack of IP addresses becoming a big problem in the near future if nothing is done to create more space.” Luckily, this is exactly what professionals are trying to do. Since the current system’s bank of four billion addresses is not enough to meet our Internet needs, experts have put together IPv6. This system is capable of housing six trillion IP addresses, an amount that is almost unimaginable. However, this solution comes with problems of its own. IPv4 and IPv6 are not compatible systems. In other words, devices that are currently connected to the Internet and have an IP address through IPv4 will not work with IPv6. The trick is to find a way to get the two systems to work together. There are other ways to get around the short-
age of IP addresses, but like IPv6, they have their share of disadvantages. One method referred to by Misener, is known as “Carrier-grade NAT.” This is essentially sharing of IP addresses: as opposed to having your own IP address, it is possible that your entire neighborhood might share an IP address. This would put off the day when all IP addresses are finally used up, but it will not work forever. It will also cause problems similar to those of a party-line telephone or sharing of the same phone number, Misener mentioned. For example, if you sent an e-mail to a person who shared an IP address with someone else, the person they shared it with would also get the e-mail. This obviously would not work for many people, considering that much of the information one has on his or her computer is private. So it seems the logical solution would be to attempt to switch to IPv6 rather than pursue any other method. The problem, however, is that Internet service providers are not switching. Only one percent of the top million websites utilize IPv6, and only six percent of all the networks that make up the net run on IPv6, according to Ward. If we do not start switching to IPv6, the problem of IP address shortages will slowly creep up on us, but only sometime after they all have been used up. Misener compared the problem to apple distribution, since IP addresses are handled in a similar way: what if one person owned the only apple farm in the world? That person would divide the apples among the whole world. He would send some to different warehouses, who would send them to grocery stores, and the apples would eventually end up in peoples’ refrigerators. If that person were to stop producing apples, it would not affect the public until sometime later, because there are still apples in the warehouses, the grocery stores and the refrigerators. What Misener is trying to say is that we need to address this problem now before it is too late. For now, there are still some IP addresses left, but they are not going to last forever. We are eventually going to reach our current systems’ capacity, but what matters is what we do now, in order to set ourselves up for the future.