At 4.3 Billion we're running out of web addresses. IPv4 is too small a protocol to enable all the permutations and combinations. Just like the need to add area codes on telephones we need a 64 bit protocol for web addresses.

So what?

First, we only have about 800,000,000 out of 6 Billion people as web subscribers and we have a lot more people that will want a web address.

Second, both telephony and entertainment services use Internet bringing the users of both the phone and entertainment on-line.

Third, we've started tagging objects with digital identifiers and tiny transcievers which gives rise to a whole new class of addresses.

Meaning to you?

This enables the "ubiquitous computers" scenario where tiny computers are embedded in your home, car, office and shopping mall.

Why should I care?

Because you are about to become "traceable" no matter when or where you go as will the major appliances, cars, and entertainment centers you use. If you thought you had privacy you are about to have a greatly diminished definition of that term.

And you are going to love it because of the rich and varied services, entertainment, financial and personal services that will accompany the technology.

Our parents and grandparents bought washing machines, gas and electric stoves, water heaters and furnaces. You forget that a hundred years ago each of those appliances required a lot of manual labor and time. Today, you wouldn't think of owning a home without most of all of those appliances and more.

We live in a Networked Society and the time and labor savings networking can deliver is about to burst into bloom and bring with it massive labor and societal changes.

The new 128 bit IPv6 is the enabler. "IPv6 could magnify capacity by some 25,000 trillion trillion times." (Technically, it allows for 340,282,366,920, 938463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses.)

Everyone, every legal entity, every physical entity will have an address and your wireless hand-held device will provide a way to find it, buy it, avoid it, track it, understand it, any way you want it. IPv6, and a great deal of
programming, will make that possible.

Views from Lisa Wellman & Terry Wellman

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