Net powers: IPv4 is over. All hail IPv6!

From CNET News.com: The Internet's overseers bid adieu to the last 83.9 million addresses needed to connect devices to today's Net--then took advantage of the moment to evangelize the next-generation Internet and the dangers of life support for today's Net.

Today's Internet is wired up with a technology called Internet Protocol version 4, or IPv4, which comes with 4.3 billion addresses to send data from one computer to another. That's a lot, but it's not enough, so now the move to the vastly more accommodating IPv6 is beginning in earnest.

"This is one most important days in the history of the Internet. A pool of more than 4 billion Internet addresses has just been emptied this morning," said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), at press conference today in Florida.

The Net won't change immediately, but IPv6 will gradually become the way everything on the Net is connected.

"We can think of it as generational change," said Lynn St Amour, CEO of the Internet Society, which handles some Internet standards and advocacy issues and is organizing World IPv6 Day to iron out bugs on June 8. "The older previous generation doesn't go away, and has a lot to contribute, but it is the new generation that carries the future."

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