Wednesday, January 26, 2011

"The Internet is filling the space will end on February 2"

Internet is growing too fast and space is running out: in a few weeks or a few days, the IP addresses - that series of numbers that uniquely identifies a computer connected to the Internet - will be completed. The warning is Vinton Cerf, the man considered the creator of the internet for planning their own technology infrastructure of IP addresses.

According to Cerf remain "few weeks" before what has been dubbed 'the IP Apocalypse', which sounds better in English: Ipcalypse. A few weeks become a few days according to the calculations of the U.S. Hurricane Electric: fewer than 30 million addresses available and at a fast pace with which they are filled, the end will arrive around 4 am on February 2.

In a week. The problem is technical, but the consequences are obvious. The issue is the standard IPv4, invented in 1977 by Vinton Cerf and actually born in the early '80s. IPv4 defines how each device connected to the network is identified and does so through a sequence of numbers like 213.92.87.37: Each block of numbers has a maximum value of 255 that gives rise to 4.3 billion possible combinations.

The world is hungry for IP addresses: the 80s, the growth has been continuous and basically stable. But in recent years there has been a surge: connections without time limit (and thus practically fixed IP addresses) and multiple devices - cell phones, smart grid and even intelligent cars - online 24 hours a day required a 'cost' in terms of increasing Ip.

Bringing the verge of collapse denounced by Cerf and many others. "It 's all my fault - Vint Cerf said in a recent interview - when we thought the system of IP addresses in a thought experiment. And we thought that 4.3 billion addresses were sufficient for an experiment." Fortunately, the Internet was not just an experiment, but now you have to solve the problem: "Who could imagine - Cerf continues - how much space we needed?".

One solution already exists and has existed for years. In the '90s, when it was realized that the Internet was not a bubble, did the evolution of IPv4: IPv6 is a 128-bit key (compared to 32 IPv4) and provides more than a billion of quadriliardi combinations (or a number of 38 digits). But the Internet service providers and large enterprises have yet to put up with the times and not everyone is ready to implement the new standard.

Do not worry: at the end of availability, the Internet will turn off. But it will slow its expansion, some devices may have to share the same IP addresses (and would be indistinguishable from the outside) and performance will slowly diminish. "Users - Ripe CNN explains, the European body that manages the IP - they will not notice the effects in the near future." But the two standards are incompatible so "sooner or later you will find it difficult to reach sites in the network to IPv6 if you are connecting is IPv4 and vice versa.

For this reason, Cerf said during a conference in Australia, it is important to accelerate the transition to the new standards, updating all the old addresses. The first major step is expected on 8 June, when Google and other large companies will test the new standard for a day. For now, the clock keeps ticking.

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