The End of the Web is Coming in 2011! (No, Not Really)

"Waiting for the internet meltdown"
TimesOnline (July 6, 2008)

"The world is heading for a digital doomsday as the net fast runs out of numerical addresses

"The end of the internet is nigh - and in less than three years, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Can it be true? The problem is that the world is running out of internet addresses. More than 85% of the available addresses have already been allocated and the OECD predicts we will have run out completely by early 2011.

"These aren’t the normal web addresses you type into your browser’s window, and which were recently freed up by Icann (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the body responsible for allocating domain names, to allow thousands of new internet domains ending in, for instance, .london or .xxx."

Despite that moderately hysterical "digital doomsday" start, this article does a decent job of telling why we're running short of IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, and what's likely to happen.

There's even mention of IPv6, with a link (www.ipv6.org), a system that's been in the works for a few years.

The article ends with a bit of Luddite commentary: "Maybe at a philosophical level it’ll be a good thing if the internet packs up. We will all be able to shut down our computers and forget the 24/7 economy. I read recently that Stone Age man, with all his hunting and gathering and other chores, still worked only 22 hours a week."

There could be a crisis in early 2011, but I suspect that this will be a bit like the Y2K crisis: a few glitches, and a lot of beneficial upgrading.