Original title: the world's 4.3 billion IPv4 addresses are officially exhausted and will transition to IPv6
The operation of the Internet is inseparable from IP addresses. In the past, IPv4 addresses (IP addresses in decimal form, such as' 202.99.50.50 ') were used. According to the latest news from foreign media, the organization responsible for assigning IP addresses in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia recently announced that the organization has run out of IPv4 addresses.
According to foreign media reports, IPv4 used 32-bit binary numbers in the past, with a total capacity of 4.3 billion in the world. In recent years, the rapid growth of Internet devices - from smart phones to personal computers, televisions or Internet of things sensors - has rapidly swallowed up the supply of IP addresses.
"We have run out of IPv4 addresses," said rip NCC, an IP address management organization in Amsterdam, the Netherlands The agency is responsible for assigning network addresses to Internet service providers and other organizations in 76 countries and regions.
The news was not entirely surprising; In fact, since the above-mentioned organizations obtained the last batch of IPv4 network addresses from another parent organization IANA in 2012, it is believed that the addresses will be used up sooner or later.
However, as the only source of IPv4 addresses in the region, the official announcement of the agency will increase the pressure on network operators and raise concerns about the continued expansion of the scale of the scalable Internet.
From now on, any IPv4 addresses returned to the institution, such as those returned from closed organizations or network institutions, will be reassigned through the waiting list. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of network addresses will be returned every year, which are far from meeting the needs of millions of new network addresses every year.
Obviously, as long as the binary length of the IP address is increased, the capacity of the network address can be increased on a large scale. At present, industry organizations have formulated an upgraded version of IPv4 and IPv6. IPv6 has so many network addresses that it is said that it can assign a network address to every grain of sand on the earth.
However, the IPv6 protocol has not been popularized on a large scale worldwide, and most of today's Internet still runs on older IPv4 networks, which means that operators may need to use complex and expensive workarounds or start to adopt IPv6 protocol and address.
Nicholas & middot, manager of registration services and policy development of the above Dutch institutions; Curtis said: "with the depletion of IPv4 addresses, we may move towards a future in which Internet growth is unnecessarily Limited - not because of the lack of skilled network engineers, technical equipment or investment - but because of the lack of unique network identifiers."
In recent years, the scarcity of traditional network addresses has promoted a large number of trading markets for second-hand IPv4 addresses. The price of each network address ranges from 10 euros to 30 euros, which means that the IPv4 transfer market is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide.
The Internet is a huge and complex network. It takes a long time to transfer from IPv4 address to IPv6 address. According to the statistics of professional institutions, as of the end of April this year, IPv6 users accounted for nearly 16% of the 3.48 billion network users in the world.
A quarter of Internet users who visit Google's website use new addresses, an increase of five percentage points over the same period last year.
It is reported that in Belgium, the United States and other countries, the penetration rate of new addresses has accounted for half. Major Internet giants such as Google and Facebook all support the access and communication of new address users.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that 2019 will be the first year of 5g communication network. It is generally believed that 5g will bring a real era of interconnection of all things. Cars, household appliances, shared bicycles, vending machines, intelligent city management devices and other devices will be networked. Relying on IPv6 technology, these devices will also have enough network addresses.