On February 2nd around 4 a.m., the Internet will run out of its current version of IP addresses. At least that is what one Internet Service Provider is predicting based on a rate of about one million addresses every four hours.

Hurricane Electric has launched Twitter and Facebook accounts that count down to what it has termed the “IPcalypse.”

Every device that is connected to the Internet gets a unique code called an IP address. The current system, IPv4, only supports about 4 billion individual IPv4 addresses.

Some of these addresses are reusable. The problem, however, is that their dedicated ips will eventually lead to the complete depletion of IP addresses.

Fortunately, some people this problem long before others did and invented IPv6, a system that uses both letters and digits to handle 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses.

  • http://twitter.com/theproweb ThePro

    LACNIC still has plenty of IP's, luckily…

    Let's hope they don't put me behind a NAT

    • http://leonhitchens.com/ Leon Hitchens

      well many places are reporting that they are running out of ips, so there are going to be a shortage very very soon.