since mid of 199x, more and more people using internet.

I am wondering if it is possible that it will be running out of IP adress soon????
and what we they do after that...

Hi Victor,

Yes, you're right there - this is a limitation of IP version 4. In IPv4, you have X.X.X.X where X is a byte ( or octet ). This gives us 32 bits - a total of 2^32 ( 4,294,967,296 ) addresses... originally this was thought to have been plenty, but I don't think they imagined the internet would quite take off as well as it did! :-)

Anyway, to put a long story short - this restriction is addressed and lifted by IP version 6. IPv6 consists of a total of 128bits for addressing, giving you 2^128 addresses... I'd work this out, but it's a HUGE number! And it pretty much gives you enough IP addresses for not only every PC in the world, but probably every car, stereo, toaster, cat etc etc etc!!

Also, IPv6 is downwardly compatible with IPv4 packets so migration of networks shouldn't be too much of a headache ( or did I speak to soon?! ) ;-)

If you want to learn more, check out the following RFC :-

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2373.txt

Hope this helps!!
Best regards, James "Lofty" Loftus.