shortage of Internet addresses, The

Credit Management, Apr 2007 by Corbitt, Terry

Terry Corbitt considers the latest challenge facing the Internet - are there enough domain names to go round?

On 26 January 2007 Vinton Cerf spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Chairman of The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and a computer scientist commonly referred to as one of the founding fathers of the Internet, Vinton Cerf said, "The massive demands being placed on the Internet could soon see the network running out of web addresses. The Internet is being threatened by mounting technological challenges, including increasingly malign viruses and botnets. Although the current Internet Protocol 4(IP4) (which allows the network to operate) has the capacity for 4.3 billion web addresses, this is insufficient to meet the demand."

Internet addresses and domain names are registered so that they can only be used by one user. The international organisation responsible for overseeing the registration of Internet domain names is the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) at www.icann.org. ICANN licenses registrars worldwide to register IP addresses and domain names. In the UK, the registrar is Nominet UK (www.nic.uk).

Mr Cerf, who is also 'Chief Internet Evangelist' at Google, went on say, "Technological companies are planning to create billions of devices that will communicate over the net and this will require many more web addresses if the system is not to implode. This means that there will soon have to be global agreement to switch to an IP6 system that will massively expand the number of possible addresses. The growing shortage of web addresses is just one of many increasingly pernicious dangers to the web's viability.

One key risk comes from so-called botnets which are malicious oroarams that bury themselves deep in personal computers to carry out criminal activities such as detecting people's passwords and sending out spam email. At one point recently botnets had absorbed 15% of Yahoo's world search capability." This is a staggering figure and one which is ringing alarm bells within the industry.

Internet speak for the layperson

IP addresses

An IP address is assigned to every computer on the Internet. The IP address is written as a series of four numbers separated by dots and looks like: 149.174.211.114 (The four numbers have a range of from O to 255, thus the lowest IP address would be 0.0.0.0 and the highest 255.255.255.255).

To send a web page to you, the web server needs your IP address as well as the address of the web page you wish to view. It gets this from your ISP who allocates it to you when you send in your request for the web page.

Domain name system

The key to how the Internet works is the Domain Name System (DNS). This is used by computers to contact each other and to exchange email or display web pages. When you want to visit a web site you type in a web address, such as www.bbc.co.uk, the Internet Protocol (IP) then uses the Internet address information and the DNS to send and receive information to and from the Internet. The domain name is translated into a numerical IP address by the domain name system.

Domain names

Every Internet website has a domain name which is used to route traffic on the Internet. Domain names are hierarchical, moving from general to specific, as you read from right to left. The last part, such as '.com' is the top level domain. What you register is the second level domain, '.abc' in the example, '.abc.com'. This should be a short name which reflects your company image or the nature of your business. Domain names sometimes end with a country abbreviation, such as '.co.uk'

To find a list of companies that are licensed by the ICANN to register domain names go to www.google.com and search for 'domain names uk'. This gives a list of websites through which you can register your domain name. Examples are net2 and 123 Domain Names UK. Check the fee structure before you register.

If vou are the reoistered user of a domain name and you no longer need to use it you can sell it through an Internet domains listing site, such as domains.uk.com and domains.eu.com

Universal Resource Locator (URL)

The addressing system for the world wide web is called the universal resource locator (URL). For example the URL for Microsoft's Web site is www.microsoft.com, where .microsoft is the subdomain name and .com is the top level domain name.

Top level domain names The top level domain names currently in use are:

.ac an academic establishment.

.com is supposed to refer to international companies with sites in more than one country.

.co company site, usually followed by country reference such as .co.uk

.biz and .info Both are used for unrestricted commercial suffixes.

.edu educational sites.

.gov government departments.

.mil military sites.

.net Internet gateway or Internet Service Provider.

.org non-profit making organisations.

Country extensions

Every country has its own suffix which is used with the top level domain name, for example, .co. uk. At present the USA does not use a country suffix. The following are some of the more widely used ones: