Five Billionth Device About To Plug Into Internet

alphadogg writes "Sometime this month, the 5 billionth device will plug into the Internet. And in 10 years, that number will grow by more than a factor of four, according to IMS Research, which tracks the installed base of equipment that can access the Internet."

Re:This is confusing....

[Kepesk]

Notice that they're careful to say they're tracking "equipment that can access the Internet". I have 1 IP address, but I have 4 internet-capable devices using it, 5 if you count my phone. I would imagine that they have ways of estimating how many devices on average use the same IP based on surveys and studies and the like.

Re:Paging Dr. IPv6

[Ephemeriis]

5 billion devices is, let's face it, outside the capacity of an addressing scheme (IPv4) that originally only anticipated a shade over 4 billion possible devices. Why are we not moving over to IPv6 faster? I don't know much about networking and related issues; what are the big challenges for IPv6 going forward?

First, you've got the whole chicken-and-egg thing going on. There isn't a compelling reason for businesses to roll out IPv6 because most of the world is still on IPv4. Nobody will be visiting you v6 website. There isn't a compelling reason for ISPs to roll out IPv6 because most of the businesses are still on v4. There are no v6 websites to visit. Nobody wants to go first.

Then you've got some very real technical hurdles... New software and hardware requirements. Patches, upgrades. All that good stuff. And right now that looks like an awful lot of work for relatively little benefit. Legacy hardware that might not be upgrade-able.

Plus, right now, NAT pretty much works. Yes, I know, it's an ugly hack... But it works. It's hard to tell somebody that you really need to spend tons of time/effort/money switching things over to IPv6 when they're currently able to do everything they need to.

You've also got some weird psychological resistance to IPv6 addressing. Folks (even IT people) freak out when they see all those hex digits.

Re:Paging Dr. IPv6

[Zocalo]

Also, no one is really sure that there are not some gaping and fundamental flaws in the protocol that are just waiting to be found and exploited by some enterprising black hat. CIOs not wanting to have to deal with a serious network compromise because they were on the bleeding edge of adoption probably has a lot to do with things. It's been a long time since large organizations have had every device on their network on an Internet routable IP, and there's a nice sense of false security to be had in thinking NAT at gateway firewalls and routers provides you with some valuable additional protection.

IPv6 loves you and wants to have your children.

[Anonymous Coward]

5 billion is a lot of devices but theres one small problem -- IPv4s 2^32 addresses minus 37% for overhead does not quite add up to 5 billion or the worlds 6.7 billion people.

When slashdot of all sites does not have a presence in IPv6 land it brings tears to my eyes and crushes all my hopes in the future of the network.

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;ipv6.slashdot.org.             IN      AAAA

;; ANSWER SECTION:
ipv6.slashdot.org.  1337   IN AAAAAAAAAAAAAA "Sad Panda"

Re:5 billion seems low

[YrWrstNtmr]

but you'd think just in the consumer market most people have at least 2 or 3 internet connected devices (laptops, phones, pda's, ebook readers, video games consoles, etc.)

A large segment of the world's population doesn't have lunch.