Thoughts from the Shelf

According to an article published on the BBC this week the first steps are being taking in an effort to overhaul the internets core addressing system. These initial steps include update to the master address books for the internet, where they are now prepared in a new format known as IP version 6. The intention is that this will end the shortage of addresses that sites can be given with the pool of unallocated addresses predicted to expire in 2011.

The problem lies with the numerical addressing system the internet currently uses. If a user uses word to find what they are looking for online and therefore types in ‘The Shelf ‘ to the address bar, computers will use a numerical equivalent that is stored in the nets master address books load the requested site

Currently the majority of internet addresses are written in a format specified by version 4 of the internet protocol called IPv4. From the 4/02/08 root servers of the internet will have a small number of records added to them that are written in IPv6.

The result will mean that any computers using IPv6 will be able to find each other without involving any IPv4 technology.

Ipv4 was the fourth version of internet protocol but was the first one to be widely used. With 4,294,967,296 possible addresses available it is which is 20 years old and is now down to the last 14% capacity of unallocated addresses. IPv6 relieves this problem presenting potentially unlimited number of addresses.

Technical Comparison
Ipv4 uses a 32 bit addressing system and has four different class types, the class types are A, B, C, and D. An example of Ipv4 is 207. 142. 131. 235.

One of the main upgrades in IPv6 is in the number of addresses available for networked devices. For example, each mobile phone or other kind of electronic device can have its own IPv6 address. IPv6 allows 3.4×10^38 addresses. This is mainly due to the number of bits in each protocol.