Internet running out of room?

Thanks to Moker from the forum for the heads up.

The European Commission on Thursday called for more efforts to expand the Internet's real estate because the current one is running out of space. The EC said in a statement that business and government leaders in Europe must work harder to shift the Internet infrastructure to run on Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) from the current IPv4 to make room for the flood of wireless devices crowding the Net.

"Without the 'IPv6 upgrade,' the Internet will inevitably degrade under the mounting pressure of new users and growing traffic while new innovations critical to European competitiveness will be stifled," the EC said in its statement.

Europe is "12 to 18 months ahead of the U.S. when it comes to cell phones and the use of cell phones for e-commerce," said analyst Stan Schatt, of Giga Information Group. But "Europe didn't get as many IP addresses as the United States," he added.

The EC says 74 percent of IPv4 addresses belong to North American organizations, with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford each owning more addresses than the Peoples' Republic of China.

The EC says the current reserve of addresses is expected to run out in 2005.

News source: ZDNet