The grill: John Curran
20 Apr 2010
As president of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), one of several regional Internet registries, John Curran oversees the issuance of Internet addresses for most of North America. The problem: IP Version 4 Internet addresses are going, going, gone. And users who get new IPv6 addresses could have a lousy experience when visiting Web sites that haven’t been updated for IPv6 — and they may not even know why. Curran explains when the world will run out of IPv4 addresses and what it takes to upgrade to IPv6.
Why are we running out of Internet addresses? We created IPv4, a 32-bit IP address architecture, more than 30 years ago. IPv4 gives a total of about 4 billion possible addresses. That seemed like a lot, but when you think about it now, with the number of people on the planet, the pervasive nature of the Internet and the number of devices each one of us has, 4 billion is a fairly small number.
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I’m trying to learn more about DNS/computer networking and I loved your post. Keep up the great work.