Yes, the countdown has begun. IPV4 address exhaustion and depletion. What is an IPV4 IP address? IPV4 addresses are the (4th) revision in the development of Internet Protocol; however the most widely developed among all of the versions. About 4.3 billion IP addresses spread out, all across the world. Think about that for a second, about 4.3 billion websites.. And there almost gone? Well the Internet started making a name for itself in the early 80’s, and as we all know, BOOM, all of a sudden we had Millionaires coming out of the woodwork. The Internet was the way of the future. Everything and anything could and can be found on the World Wide Web. But we are talking about a billion here.

Well believe it or not, in less than 35 years, more than 3.9 billion IP address have been allocated in one way, shape or form. Why is this so important? Well most of you reading this blog know about SEO Hosting, or Search Engine Optimization, and how it can affect your website(s), its traffic, and in some cases the success of your business. You are able to take an IPV4 (IP) address and in a matter of speaking, attach your website to that specific dedicated IP. Now when your website is the only site on a specific IP, and someone uses a “search engine” to look up your industry, you’re not sharing your IP with any other company, or website. Which in turn allows your website to be viewed first, more so than people sharing an IP. So since the development of IPV4 and the Internet boom, companies have paid top dollar to make sure that they were the only ones on a specific IP, so again, when a consumer was searching specific products, your company shows up first in line, right on top of the page. This leaves such an importance on a single IP…. Now they are running out….

In comes IPV6, to allow more people and traffic on the internet. Now remember I said that there were around 4.3 billion IP addresses in IPV4.  So mathematically IPV4 allows for 32 bits and therefore has 2³² (4 294 967 296) possible addresses, IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, for an address space of 2¹²⁸ (approximately 3.4×10³⁸) addresses.

You are now into the trillions, more IP’s than anyone could even think about.

You can see how the amount of IPV6 IP’s will greatly diminish the importance of a specific IP.  With so many IP’s, well beyond the billion mark, where is the individuality and diversity?  With such a number, how can we make one website more important than the other, especially when web traffic is designed to follow internet protocol, IP’s.

Now don’t get me wrong, in the next few years your company will still be found on the web, no matter what, but at what cost?

Find out in Part 2….