Cisco Implements System to Expand Addresses on Net
The Internet may be gigantic, but it’s not infinite--at least not yet. But the lofty goal of enabling the mother of all networks to serve a virtually unlimited number of people and devices got a modest boost Monday.
Network hardware giant Cisco Systems Inc. announced that its equipment now supports a new system that can expand the 4.2 billion potential Internet “addresses” available today by several orders of magnitude.
Over the next few years, billions of new unique identifying numbers, or addresses, may be needed to accommodate expected growth in Web-connected cellular phones and appliances, as well as a flood of new computer users from Asia. The new system will raise the number of permitted addresses to 80 octillion--that’s 80 followed by 27 zeros.
Given the expected proliferation of Internet-connected devices in the home and in automobiles, network architects fear that before 2010 the world will run out of unique Internet Protocol or “IP” addresses unless Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6, is adopted.
Cisco’s implementation of IPv6 was long expected. The company, which makes most of the world’s routers and switches--electronic traffic cops that direct data signals across the Internet--has been a designer and leading booster of the new system. Another big hurdle will be getting Microsoft Corp. to announce similar support within its Windows operating systems that run the vast majority of the world’s computers.
“If Microsoft doesn’t have anything that’s out there in the next year or two, when [the address shortage] becomes a crisis, it could be really sticky,” said Scott Bradner a consultant for Harvard University and one of the original project managers of the industry group that created IPv6.
Microsoft now offers preliminary versions of its software with support for IPv6, but has yet to produce a commercial release of Windows that includes the new protocol. Dwight Krossa, Microsoft’s director of emerging business, said full support for IPv6 would go on sale by April of next year with the next version of the company’s software for server computers that operate networks. Support for the version of Windows used in most PCs will follow soon after, he said.
Highlighting the urgency of the transition to IPv6, experts say fewer than 1 billion usable Internet addresses are now left for assignment.
“If you’re an [Internet service provider] in China or India, it’s already very hard to get IP addresses,” said Robert Hinden, a top engineer for the wireless giant Nokia Corp., and co-chair of the group that developed IPv6. “In the U.S. we haven’t seen [shortages] because of [our] historically large allocations.”
As a result, many foreign Internet service providers have had to use technology tricks that share the use of an IP address between many devices, hampering the Internet’s efficiency in the process.
“As addresses get scarcer and scarcer there will be more and more complexity [to accommodate new users]. The reliability of the Net will go down, and the cost will go up,” Hinden said.
Hinden said that even after Microsoft and other large companies implement IPv6 in their products, it will take several years for the new system to be tested and to win general acceptance.
Martin McNealis, director of IP product management for Cisco, predicted that the new addressing system will dramatically boost efforts to connect millions of household devices, video game consoles and global positioning systems within cars to the Internet.
