IPv4 addresses rapidly running out: technologist

Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 19 October 2010 12:43

Business IT - Networking

The IPv4 address space is rapidly running out but despite this it is impossible to predict when a switch to IPv6 will take place, a senior technologist from a company that makes secure web gateways says.

Qing Li, chief scientist and senior technologist at Blue Coat Systems, said that making the switch to IPv6 would require some learning by technical people as changing over was not trivial; this resulted in most people putting it in the too-hard basket.

"IPv4 addresses are rapidly getting exhausted," Qing (pic below) said. "It is thus not possible for enterprises to obtain addresses for various services they want to offer; they have to depend on third-party software.

"Take the case of a company which is holding an executive meeting or making a presentation to a customer; most of the time in the US we use WebEx which is a third-party online meeting and video conferencing service.

"This opens up security issues and also problems of intellectual property; how do you know that your information is going to be safeguarded by a third party? Additionally, what if the third party's services are down?"

He said the only solution was for companies to obtain addresses and use them for running their own services. The problem lay in the fact that most companies owned just one or two addresses.

"With IPv6, individual enterprises can obtain native IPv6 addresses and do their own hosting; they can open up FTP services if they wish, using one address for each service," he said.

Qing is in Melbourne to speak at the annual IPv6 summit. He is also speaking at Swinburne University. At the last IPv6 summit, held in Beijing, his company received an award for being a pioneer in the development of IPv6 application.