IT Professionals

IPv4 To Become The Next Y2K?

Posted by on Jul 22, 2010 | 3 Comments

There should be an image here!We’re running out of available addresses to hand out to potential Web sites, apparently. Not running out of domain names, rather, the IPv4 addresses they are pointing to instead. Seems that we have less than a year before the world comes into what is being described as another Y2K scare.

Now there are solutions to this problem, such as embracing IPv6 for instance, but with the slow adoption to this standard, could we see a real problem developing due to the lack of concern until the last minute? Sure looks like it.

Too bad this wasn’t a problem with possible domain names instead. I have a catalog of them that I need to dump sooner than later. And with a fictional shortage, I imagine a tidy sum could be earned. But no, instead it’s a shortage of another nature. Hopefully a resolution to getting this taken care of will happen before it’s too late.

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  • http://savedr.blogspot.com savedr

    I don’t know. One thing I like about IPv4 is that, even though they addresses are an arbitrary string of numbers, they are short enough to be memorable. I can remember several off the top of my head for when I need them, things like the pictured 127.0.0.1, my router’s IP of 192.168.1.1, even OpenDNS’s two IPs of 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (I think those are right).

    But IPv6, on the other hand, seems more impossible for me to remember. It’s more like 6a.b1.23.11.ae.fa.d9.61.a0.a2.32 or something, it seems like way more octets. Mathematically it’s great, as it gives us millions more addresses available than the IP4 system, but I can’t see myself easily remembering OpenDNS’s or Google’s v6 IP as easily.

    I’m sure I’ll get over it, though. After all, I’ve got mine and my brother-in-law’s 26-character WEP keys memorized, much to his & my nephews’ delight. (They love having me reel them off on command.) :D

  • Ben

    I think one of the reasons the Y2K scare kinda fizzled out is because companies started working on fixes several years before Jan 1, 2000 rolled around. It might surprise folks to know that people began working on the IPv6 concept back in 1994. When the time comes to make the switch I believe it will be a seemless process. Too many people, businesses, and goverments rely on computers and the internet to let the transition bring it all crashing down.

    http://www.ipv6.com/articles/general/timeline-of-ipv6.htm

  • http://www.justenrobertson.com Justen

    @Savedr: yikes man, WEP keys? Don’t memorize, just get aircrack, it’ll pop the network open faster than you can recite anyway ;)

    This is not really going to be apocalyptic. Most end-user systems already support ipv6. I think everything up from Win XP SP 2 and any 2.6+ kernel (maybe 2.4 or even earlier) in Linux is good to go, and I would assume most Macs are as well. It’s more of a problem of routers not being able to handle it (including those cute little boxes that sit in people’s home offices and share the moniker). The necessity of upgrading routing hardware will push hosting companies and ISPs to fill the gap as it broadens. Most people won’t even know the transition has happened, or at worst will have to go shell out for a new router when theirs chokes up or starts delivering timeouts in place of web pages (and *still* probably won’t understand the cause).

    Another thing to think about, the analog-digital transition in television broadcasting wasn’t hard as people made it out to be, and it was a much bigger change technologically and habitually. People don’t have to get new PCs or even new browsers for ipv6.