Availability of Internet Protocol or IP addresses ending

The world will soon run out of Internet addresses as the number of devices connected to the Web explodes unless organisations move to a new Internet Protocol version. Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of ICANN, said only 8 or 9% of ipv4 addresses were left, and companies needed to switch to the new standard of ipv6 as quickly as possible.

Ipv4, used ever since the Internet became public in the 1980s, was created with space for only a few billion addresses, whereas ipv6 has trillions. A multitude of gadgets including cameras, music players and video-game consoles are joining computers and mobile phones in being connected to the Web, and each needs its own IP address.

Some predicted that there would be 50 billion connected devices by 2020. ICANN approved the gradual introduction of internationalised domain names last year. Nations can now apply for country-level domain names in other scripts, such as Arabic or Chinese, but eventually this will be expanded to all Internet address names.