The original batch of internet addresses has officially run dry as the final five blocks of internet protocols known as IP version 4 are assigned to the regional bodies responsible for their distribution.

Despite containing some 16 million IP addresses apiece the five remaining blocks of internet protocols called /8s are expected to have been completely exhausted by September this year ending the run of 4.3 billion addresses assigned under IPv4.

There is no need to fret about the future of internet access and content, however, follow-up to IPv4, IP version 6 is already well under way despite the full move to iPv6 expected to take a number of years to complete. Ensuring similar changes need not be made again in the near future the pool of IPv6 addresses is said to be a “billion, trillion times larger” than its predecessor.

"This is one of the most important days in the internet's history," declared Rod Beckstrom, head of net overseer Icann on the assigning of the final five blocks of current IP addresses.

He added: "It is a point that the founders of the internet thought would occur far in the future. It gives us an opportunity to shift to an internet protocol that offers a pool so large that it is difficult even to imagine."

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Via: BBC