We’re running out of time
18 Jan 2010
It’s something people don’t want to talk about. Something we all forget amongst the other threats to our world and society – climate change, pollution, war, genocide. They’re all extremely important causes to be sure. But what if the Internet halted? That is part of the threat we are dealing with. It won’t be a virus or terrorist attack or global meltdown of basic services. It’s built in to the Internet’s design.
The Internet was built in layers – levels of protocols meant to exchange “packets” (small bundles of data) between devices assigned IP addresses – like a phone number for devices connected to the Internet. Anyone who has a computer, phone, or game console connected to the Internet has an IP address.
More from Digitas Gravitas…
This article contains a number of errors:
- The author gets the available IPv4 address range wrong, suggesting that the multicast and reserved (formerly class D and E) ranges are available.
- He clearly doesn’t understand subnetting, nor even what hexadecimal is (base 18?).
- “Spectrum” has nothing to do with IP addressing.
- You don’t have to buy IPv6 addresses (nor IPv4 ones for that matter): they are free (although with IPv4, justification was and is still needed).
Thank you for the feedback. I am the author of the article and I must admit I clearly did not check over my own work thoroughly enough. Granted, I never claim to be an expert and my article is meant to be more accessible to people not well versed in these areas. In that fact, I have glossed over some details to the point of being inaccurate i.e using the term “spectrum” or “buying addresses” and including the multicast and reserved areas. In addition, the base 18 was a simple typo, hexadecimal is obviously base 16.
While the errors are numerous, I don’t think they draw away from the overall message and I’d hope everyone can still read the article and come away more knowledgeable and informed about IPv4’s exhaustion.