It's a disaster 30 years in the making.
You see, the interent address for this blog is not radioactivecommunistzombies.com, it's 68.178.232.100. That's called the IP address and there's only about 232 million of them left.
Thirty years ago, the current standard in IP address was developed and it was called IPv4. But no one then imagined it couldn't be enough IP addresses. As Fox News reports:
When the IPv4 protocol was developed 30 years ago, it seemed to be a reasonable attempt at providing enough addresses," carrier relations manager at Australian internet service provider (ISP) Internode John Lindsay told the Herald.
"Bearing in mind that at that point personal computers didn't really exist, the idea that mobile phones might want an IP address hadn't occurred to anybody because mobile phones hadn't been invented [and] the idea that air-conditioners and refrigerators might want them was utterly ludicrous."
So John Lindsay is predicting the world runs out of IP addresses in 340 days (July 1, 2011).
There is a solution but it's painful. It's called IPv6 and it would give every human on Earth more than 4 billion IP addresses each.
Problem is, switching every device over to IPv6 would require all devices connected to the internet to be reconfigured or upgraded. That's every personal computer, every server, every smart phone, every video game system, every other thing connected to the internet. And that's going to be tough.
The stop gap measures:
In the meantime ISPs may force multiple customers to share IP addresses, which may lead to common applications, such as Gmail and iTunes, ceasing to work.
There are also fears a black market of IP addresses may spring up. Don't know how that would work, but it might be interesting. Hang on to those IP addresses, they might be going up in value. I also have no idea how you might do that.


