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The Internet has been rolling along for decades on the strength of IPv4 and its numbering system, which has supplied billions of addresses. As long as more addresses were available, few people thought about them. But the booming popularity of the Internet has finally soaked up nearly all those fresh numbers: In February, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) allocated the last of its unused large blocks of IPv4 addresses to regional Internet registries. On Wednesday, World IPv6 Day will turn the new protocol on at hundreds of companies, agencies and universities for testing. Suddenly, IT administrators and consumers alike are starting to think more about IP addresses. Here are the answers to a few questions about the numbers that make the Internet work. |
