Internet Will Run Out Of IP Addresses By 2010

The "father of the internet" has warned that the web is running out of addresses and users need to act now to change to a new system.

Vint Cerf, the man who helped invent the system and one of the world's leading computer scientists, said that the web does not have enough unique codes that allow computers to communicate with each other.

He said that when the internet protocol (IP) addresses do run out, the connectivity of the internet will be damaged and some computers will not be able to go online.

"This is like the internet running out of telephone numbers and with no new numbers, you can't have more subscribers," he said

Preparations had to be made now, he said, to switch addresses to a new system.

When the internet was founded in 1977 there were 4.2 billion addresses available under the internet protocol version four (IPv4) system.

Each of the IPv4 addresses has a series of 32 binary numbers, but with the rapid expansion of broadband across the world, it is estimated that these addresses will run out by 2010.

A new system called IPv6 has been ready for a decade and is already used in Japan to connect thousands of earthquake sensors through a computer system that sends automatic alerts to television programmes and turns traffic lights red.

IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long and so provide a possible 340 trillion, trillion, trillion address space.