The internet is full, what now?

Sometime next year the internet as we know it will run out of IP addresses. That's why we have IPv6, but why are so few people using it?

It sounds like another Y2K type scenario doesn't it? James Spenceley, the CEO of Vocus, says the analogy is closer to when we ran out of phone numbers. We fixed the problem by adding an extra digit. Paul Brooks, principal at Layer10 Consulting, says this time we're creating enough addresses to give one to each grain of sand in the galaxy. That's probably enough to be going on with.

I talk to them both on Twisted Wire this week, to see what needs to change to make the move to IPv6. It is, of course, more complex than adding an extra digit onto a phone number. There are hardware and software issues to overcome.

Most networks are IPv6 ready — or at least they can be with a little configuration. So what's the bottleneck that's stopping us all moving over to an IPv6 internet?

I also ask the obvious question: we're on IPv4 now, we're moving to IPv6, what happened to IPv5?

Running time: 28 minutes, 11 seconds