Lee Graham | GOAT = Geek Of All Trades

TimesOnline.co.uk released a story today titled, “Waiting for the internet meltdown.”

They say its the end of the internet, but I say its just the beginning!

THE ISSUE
The current domain registry is limited to 21 Top Level Domains (TLD): .com, .net, .org, .me, etc… and under our current Internet Protocol (IP) system “IPv4” (32 bits) there are roughly 4.2 billion IP addresses available. Not bad considering there are 6+ billion people… right?

What happened a few weeks ago was ICANN did was allow people the freedom to create their own .com, .leegraham, .trimagination, .hsova, etc… Pretty cool and this will allowing another level of creativity in creating branded domains.

Now there will be pretty much an unlimited set of TLDs. They are saying all of these new TLDs will take up all of the IP addresses. Yes, this is definitely a possibility.

THE SOLUTION
There is a planned extension of IP addresses called, IPv6 aka “IP, the next generation.” IPv6 is 128 bits instead of the 32 offered by IPv4. Basically, this will allow for 3.4 x 10³⁸ IP addresses.

Cisco’s IPv6 Solution – Example 1

More Geeky Explanation

(click either image to view Full Size Image)

While this is still in the testing and experimenting stages it should replace IPv4 and resolve the IP / TLD issue. Currently, most operating systems (Windows 2000+, Mac OS X 10.2+, & most Linux OS) and most network routers. In 2000, Cisco – the world’s largest IP hardware company, released a IPv6 roadmap for implementing the new system.

Yes, there will be a significant cost to upgrade the worldwide system, but this is very similar to the days before cities had citywide electrical & waste management systems. Its a big step to make the upgrade, but in the end the benefits will be rewarding.

CONCLUSION
There appears to be no real need for alarm. Could this be an online newspaper journalist, looking to create some sort of chaos/doomsday scenario to drive hits to his online newspaper?

Mr. Harris wrote, “And so the internet lurches on, patched with technology that may help it stagger through a few more years, but doomed to slow down unless big players such as Google, BT and governments start investing now.”

In reality, Google has been working on this before June 2006 and it is still a concern that they are actively working on: Google IPv6 Conference 2008 & Google Blog: Looking toward IPv6 (May 2008). They even have a working IPv6 link (this requires an IPv6 connection): ipv6.google.com

This is the beginning, not the end of the internet!