IPv4 Address For Asia, No More?

The organization responsible for doling out internet addresses in asia, the APNIC, just released their last block of available IPv4 addresses. We’ve known for a long time that the available pool was going to run out sooner or later. It wasn’t until recently, with the explosion of mobile devices and individuals getting wired into the Net worldwide. The Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) announced in Feburary that they handed the last blocks of IPv4 to the regional registries. With the continued online growth in Asia, they’ve used up their share a bit earlier than expected.

“Considering the ongoing demand for IP addresses, this date effectively represents IPv4 exhaustion for many of the current operators in the Asia Pacific region,” Wilson, the director of APNIC, said. “From this day onwards, IPv6 is mandatory for building new Internet networks and services.” This might to slow internet based economic development for a short time in Asia while companies deploy IPv6 solutions. But it’s not even a roadblock, barely a speedbump. Don’t panic.

For most people, this isn’t really going to matter. All of these issues are taken care of on the backend. IPv6 is pretty cool though, instead of a boring IP address like 45.87.256.19 you’ll have all of the style and grace of hexadecimal notation, 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. Its quite hard to convert and hard to memorize!!! Wooaaahhh!!! wew... Another challenge for the internet hackers LoL!

Theoretically, once APNIC has run out of IPv4 addresses, this means that internet service providers (ISPs) can no longer request for new ones as the well has run dry, and therefore anyone who wants to put up a web site will have to use the new IPv6 — and learn to love it.

The catch is that these ISPs had better be IPv6-ready, which means that they’ve done the homework of providing IPv6-to-IPv4 connectivity for their subscribers. Otherwise, IPv6 users won’t be able to access the vast amount of non-IPv6-ready websites.

Should you be worried? Not really. Well, not unless you plan to set up a website in the near future and your ISP happens to be unaware about the entire IPv4 issue.