Raise your hand if you’ve heard of IPv6. Anyone besides Ralph? Well News.com has a good overview of what this next-generation project is, what it solves and the limits that forced its creation.
For those unfamiliar with internet lingo, it stands for Internet Protocol version 6, it’s an “update” to the current standard called IPv4. The most notable difference with IPv6 is the addressing space, which is 128-bit versus IPv4 which is only 32-bit (if you’re familiar with CPUs it’s a similar battle between 32-bit and 64-bit designers [AMD vs. Intel]). With IPv4 there is a 4.3 billion limitation to the amount of addresses available (like 192.168.0.1). This was implemented 30 years ago and the space was delegated at a time when North America was basically the only geographic area that would need/use the technology — so in turn, they got 70% of the space. Places such as, China and India basically got the short end of the stick, with China only receiving 30 million IPs.
The biggest problem that you probably see is that this limited supply will soon be saturated, especially in markets like China and Japan whose populations love to be “always-on” (web phones and the like). As a result, IPv6 is being embraced by individuals and companies in many other areas outside of North America — because instead of only have access to 4.3 billion IPs, you now have 1000 IPs for every person on the planet.
And they all said “hurray.”
Anyways, the reason I mentioned this is because new web phones are responsible for saturating more and more of this network… and I just bought one. Actually, mine is a super neat 2.5G phone — I can’t surf the web.
So I’m not part of the problem, I’m part of the solution, and that my friends is what the Gipper would be pleased to hear about. Do it for the Gipper.