The good news: This is the best blog post of all time. (Of all time!) The bad news: You’ll never be able to read it.
That’s because the Internet is shutting down. Closing up shop. Pining for the fjords. You see, we seem to have run out of IP addresses for everyone, so it’s only a matter of time before the last web server gets shut down and shipped off to a landfill in China. Pack up your PC, dust off your grandmother’s typewriter, and let the newspapers know they can stay in business after all. LOLcats, it was nice knowing you.
Well, we’re not completely out of IP addresses yet. But definitely soon. How soon? Maybe as early as February 2nd (according to Hurricane Electric) or as late as July 25, 2012 (according to IT security expert Stephen Lagerholm). Either way, we’re pretty much screwed.
How did this happen, you might ask? Good question.
Basically, everyone currently uses version 4 of the Internet Protocol standard for network IP addresses. An IPv4 address might look something like 65.124.220.13. Addresses are broken down into different classes, with a few subnets reserved for private use. For example, anything in the 10.x.x.x range would be considered a private IP address and would be used only on private local area networks such as a business or home. The address 127.0.0.1 is also reserved and is called the loopback address. When you calculate the total number of public IPv4 addresses that can be assigned, you get a number just shy of 4.3 billion.
In the early days of the Internet, no one could’ve imagined ever needing 4 billion IP addresses, but it quickly became apparent that it might not be enough. So along came IPv6 with addresses like 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. IPv6 addresses aren’t as easy to rattle off as their version 4 predecessors, but there’s a heck of a lot more of them. Instead of 4.3 billion unique addresses, IPv6 can provide 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. Which is a lot.
The problem is, the two protocol standards aren’t compatible with each other. IPv4 devices can’t talk to IPv6 ones. And with the Internet built entirely on IPv4, you can’t just flip a switch and move over to version 6. So even though version 6 has been around since 1998, it’s largely been ignored.
Until now.
With the world quickly running out of publicly available version 4 addresses, websites, ISPs, and end users will be forced to move to version 6 one way or another. The closest analogy to this is the transition from analog TV broadcasts to digital that occurred a few years ago. Except this is much, much bigger. It’s not just a matter of slapping a digital converter box onto your aging television. Content providers have to switch over to IPv6, ISPs and backbone carriers have to upgrade or replace systems throughout their network, and end users have to upgrade their networks and devices. And somehow all this has to be made to work alongside the existing IPv4 infrastructure to allow for a somewhat seamless transition period.
Of course, such a transition won’t happen overnight, and certainly not within the next week. So it’s possible there could be sporadic service disruptions in some parts of the world, sorta like rolling blackouts. But the truth is, no one really knows for sure.
What we do know, however, is that this transition isn’t optional. The Internet is no longer a preference, it’s a necessity. For businesses, for governments, for utilities, for the military. Moving to IPv6 is the only practical solution to this problem that we’ve known about for well over a decade.
In the event that we fail, though, just remember to tell your grandkids about me. And be sure to let them know I had the greatest blog of all time.
Previously:
Welcome to the future
Can you hear me now?
Vanity Fair’s history of the Internet
