Representatives from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), an international nonprofit organization that regulates IP addresses over the Internet, have convened a press conference on Thursday in Miami. They are expected to announce that the regional regulators have been allocated the last blocks of free addresses within the protocol IPv4.
As reported by IDG, the press conference will be attended by the representatives from ICANN; NRO (Number Resource Organization), representing the interests of all the five 4fb4779399a76; IAB (Internet Architecture Board); ISOC (Internet Society), an international professional organization comprising 20,000 individual members and more than 100 member organizations from 180 countries worldwide.
ICANN is also expected to announce that there are no more free IP addresses available with ICANN. IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), which looks after IP address allocation and is a member of ICANN, has allocated the last available blocks of addresses to five existing regional Internet registrars (RIR).
Once RIRs get those IP addresses, they may sell them to ISPs and other local organizations, but they will not be able to apply to ICANN for obtaining new IP addresses. There are no more free addresses in the aging IPv4 protocol. According to experts’ forecasts, the stock of available IPs from the regional registrars will be exhausted by 2012.
IPv4 was formulated in September 1981 and now it has ceased to conform to the technical characteristics of existing networks. The main drawback of this protocol is the limitation of addresses: IPv4 standard can have a little more than four billion unique addresses.
However, this year, ICANN plans to shift Internet to IPv6. The new standard will not only relieve the shortage of addresses, but it will also use larger data packets that in fast networks can reach up to 4 GB. IPv6 protocol envisages the possibility of broadcasting, when same data is simultaneously sent to multiple recipients, and it will also support secure protocol IPSec, which ensures encryption and authentication of information.
