The Second Internet: Reinventing Computer Networking with IPv6

There is an entire chapter in this book on the depletion of the IPv4 address space. What this means (in English) is that we are running out of IP addresses for the First Internet. This will be a very important event in the history of the Internet. We nearly ran out in 1997, and only managed to keep the Internet going through some clever tricks (NAT and Private Addresses), kind of like using private extension numbers in a company PBX phone system. However, even with this trick (which is now causing major problems), we are about to run out for good. The folks that create the Internet don’t have any more clever tricks up their sleeves. All the groups that oversee the Internet, like the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Internet Society (ISOC), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Regional Internet Registrars (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, LATNIC and AFRINIC) have been saying for some time that the world has to migrate now. They should know. They are the ones that give out IP addresses. They know that the barrel is almost empty. We’ve got to increase the number of unique Internet addresses, which has some far reaching consequences.