iPocalypso – It’s a very special day!

You may have heard people talk about the ipocalypse, and maybe you’re fretting about it, well… I’m going to try and explain it in laymans terms.

Basically the internet is full, or kind of…

When you connect to the internet, your router shakes hands with the internet using an IP address, which looks something like this 118.209.41.96

It’s not usually all that visible unless you dig for it, but it’s there.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that when the internet was put together, it was calculated that about four billion IP addresses should be enough, afterall, computers would be quite expensive and it’s unlikely that there’d be many of them out there.

Roll on to 2011 and almost everyone owns a computer… this is a problem.

The IP addresses are running out.

Now I don’t want to shock you… ok, yes I do…. This isn’t going to happen years from now, or months… It will happen in hours from now, Seriously… In fact, here’s a handy-dandy widget to look at, just look at those numbers go!

Yes, that’s all the IPs that are left on the entire planet, Yesterday it was showing eight million, as I look at it now, it’s just above four million.

When it gets to “0” we’ll be in a right old pickle, as the internet will begin to slow down and generally not work properly, and eventually it will do a big fart, fall off it’s perch and die.

It will be a dead parrot.

Well, sort of.

You see, The Elders of the Internet could see this coming, and sat at their round table and thrashed out an idea, a brand new IP system… Basically the one we use now is called IPv4, The new one is called IPv6 (Wonder what happened to version 5?).

So they told everyone that if we start using IPv6, there will be trillions of new IPs available, and the internet won’t beach itself like a giant fail-whale.

Everyone thought that was a good idea and went for it.

BUT, Much like the change from analogue to digital TV, there will be things to check.

You need to see if your router handles IPv6, if it does, lovely… If not, then you may need to buy a brand new one, be aware that the internet will only slowly get worse, you may not notice any big hiccups for a few months, but a few months is all you have, so you must get an IPv6 router sometime soon if you need to.

You need to check if your ISP handles IPv6, not all of them do, but our Internode certainly does.

Then you need to phone your ISP and have them change you over to IPv6.

Do be aware that all recent internet connections will most likely be on IPv6 already, or should be, check!

Lastly, you should listen to Mark Newton from Internode, He was being interviewed by Carol Duncan at ABC Newcastle just yesterday about this issue, and will go into much more detail than I have here.

Wolfie!