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When your computer connects to the internet, it is given a
unique ‘IP address’. It’s like being
given a room number when you check in to a hotel. Some computers
(e.g., email servers) get to keep the same room number all the time so
people know where to find them, but your computer might actually get a
different room number each time you connect. Your room
number will look something like ‘216.27.61.137’.
The problem is that computers talk in binary (ones and zeros),
so in binary your address looks
like 11011000.00011011.00111101.10001001. With a finite
number of ones and zeros in this 8 character.8 character.8
character.8 character number, that’s a total
of 4.3 billion unique addresses. But now that’s not enough and some of
those addresses are reserved for internal company networks and other
reasons, which make the usable number even smaller. The world now
has too many computers that want to be on the internet and we’re
running out of hotel rooms.
If we did nothing about it, we would literally not be able to
connect any new computers to the internet.
But the internet boffins have been
aware of this problem for some time and in Dec 1998 they launched
a new standard for hotel room numbers (called IP v6). This new
address would look like 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 and would allow
for 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
unique addresses!! If you want to read that out loud, it’s 340 undecillion, 282 decillion,
366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463
quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 768 million,
211 thousand, four hundred and fifty six.
The challenge is that the old address and the new addresses
can’t natively talk to each other. If your computer can handle a new IP
v6 address (Windows XP Service Pack 2 or newer software like Windows
7), it won’t be able to talk to anything on the internet that’s still
using the old IP v4 address. And because the internet is literally a
collection of other people’s computers, we can’t just pick a date and
change every computer over at the same time.
The whole situation then is kind of similar to the Year 2000,
‘Y2K’ bug. The good news is that the internet boffins
know about this problem too, so they are working on transition
mechanisms to allow the old and the new to talk nicely to one
another. There has been no sense of urgency until now to do
anything about it, as it’s going to cost them time and money to fix,
but it’s not going to make anyone any money.
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