IP address is an address that is assigned to you by your Internet Service Provider(ISP) when you connect yourself to the Internet. It's a unique global address. That means, when you are in the Internet, your computer can be identified uniquely by this address at that moment.
Now this addresses are used in the Internet according to some protocol. IPv4 or Internet Protocol version 4 was such first highly deployed Internet protocol. IPv4 is capable of working with 32 bit addresses. The pool of IPv4 addresses contain 2^32 or 4,294,967,296 unique addresses. Since September,1981 when IETF first described IPv4, it has been in use & initially,this pool of IP addresses was taken as adequate to serve the Internet community for long. But, due to poor IP address allocation procedure(classful addressing), IPv4 was facing high depletion of addresses. A huge number of addresses were being wasted. In order to prevent that, several solutions like Network address translation,classless addressing, subnetting,private network were developed. But all these were short term solutions. So Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) , the community reponsible for technical aspects of Internet,started looking for a long term solution & in December 1998, it came up with the big brother of IPv4. A next generation Internet Protocol, called IPv6.
IPv6, is indeed a next generation protocol. It supports 128 bit addresses. In comparison to 32 bit addresses of IPv4, it' pretty large & so is it's address space, which consists of 2^128 unique addresses. Besides that IPv6 has support for modern Internet services like VoIP, moible IP, IP telephony etc. So, after one or one & a half year from now, IPv6 addresses will be distributed among the Internet users. But , will this sudden switch be that easy? Not at all.
IP protocols are the backbones of the Internet. Every system that provides or receives web services, relies on the IP protocol. It's a standard, that has to be followed by everyone. Now a sudden switch to a different protocol, that's why, is not going to be that easy. Let's see why.
Say Alice is a server that supports IPv6 & Bob, who wants to get a service from Alice, supports IPv4 only. In that case, they won't be able to communicate with each other.
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Again reversely say, Alice is a server that supports IPv4 & Bob,a new user who wants to get a service from Alice, supports IPv6 only. In that case, they won't be able to communicate with each other either.
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We should consider a third case here. What if both Alice & Bob supports IPv6? Will that be enough to satisfy both? No again. Why? Though Alice & Bob supports IPv6, their data packets, technically known as IP datagrams, have to pass through many other servers or routers, who might not support IPv6. So, that again is going to do result nothing.
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Now this shows how problematic it will be for the new users. Some won't be able to provide services & some won't be able to get services.So are you afraid? One thing that must be going through your mind is "then what will happen to this new users?" Well, we have remedies for all this problems. But, unfortunately, in spite of knowing about this inevitable exhaustion of IP addresses, large companies & authorities haven't taken proper measures to implement the solutions. So, a warning is being spread to all the service provider, be it Government organization or private companies, that they must support IPv6 within 12 or 18 months. Otherwise, newly registered IPv6 customers will prefer IPv6 supporting contents over their less efficient IPv4 supporting content. As IPv6 deployment is on it's way & is surging day by day, this number of customers is going to be a big figure within few years. Top US companies like Google, Netflix are already providing IPv6 support.
Below, you can see an IPv4 exhaustion counter, which is available at :
http://www.inetcore.com/project/ipv4ec/index_en.html
This is a meter that shows ratio of IPv4 IPv6 web access to this page.
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