IPv6 101

Judi Hasson's provides a brief non-technical overview of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) which will expand the Internet with new coding, ways to transmit data and provide more web addresses, many, many more web addresses. Using 32-bit addresses, the current protocol, IPv4, can only provide about 4.3 billion addresses. Only? Yes, apparently we're running out.

IPv6 offers 128-bit addresses and will provide 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 addresses. That's 3.4 followed by 37 zeroes. Should be enough until every person in China has a desktop, laptop, printer, cell phone and iPod. [JH]