The Internet Runs Out of Numbers. No Big Deal.
A couple of days ago, the Internet ran out of numbers. How is that possible, you say? Aren't 
numbers infinite?
The numbers referred to are the internet protocol addresses (IP addresses) that are assigned to every device connected to the internet. Each device has its unique number and the number is what allows the devices attached to the internet to talk to each other. We humans deal in domain names like www.austintechnologylawblog.com but the computers convert these names into numbers that look like this: 192.0.2.53. This numbering convention is called IPv4 and was developed in the early days of the internet and has been adequate until now. IPv4 has a finite capacity of just over 4 billion addresses.
IP addresses are administered by a non-profit entity known as ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and they allocate the numbers among 5 Regional Internet Registries (RIR). What the exhaustion of numbers really means is that all available numbers have been allocated to the RIRs for further distribution and none remain in the ICANN central pool. The RIRs will continue to distribute such numbers but even the end of that is in sight.
What happens now? Complete shutdown, anarchy, the end of the Egyptian uprising and the
demise of sexting? Nope, luckily the folks looking after this have anticipated this (like Y2K) and have established IPv6, a new and improved IP address protocol. IPv6 addresses are written in hexadecimal and have a 128-bit address space, which provides for 340 undecillion addresses. Suffice it to say, that's a lot and should last into the foreseeable future.
IPv6 addresses will contain colons and will look something like this: 2001:0db8::53. When you see two colons together it means that the segments between contain only zeros. In the example above as given by ICANN, it really means: 2001:0db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0053
So, no need to panic just yet. Supposedly, most existing devices we use today are compatible with IPv6. Internet service providers will initiate roll out of the new numbers when needed and (supposedly) users will not have to take any real actions. That remains to be seen but as of now, we've still got numbers.
