According to several measures by experts, the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), an ICANN-operated organization which administers the Internet's IP address infrastructure and root servers, has run out of IPv4 address blocks to assign to RIRs (Regional Internet Registries). We are close to that point, but the situation is more complicated than it may seem.

What happens then? The future is very uncertain. There's IPv6, but the roblem is that IPv6 isn’t backwards compatible with IPv4, which means that everybody will need to upgrade the software on their computers and networking equipment and, in some cases, buy completely new hardware, which is going to be very expensive, and in any case, it's difficult to imagine how all that can happen in just a few weeks.

However, although upfront costs of moving to the new protocol will be high, any further delays would push costs even higher. In June, Vint Cerf, appeared in an online video urging ISPs to do more to transition to IPv6.

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• Has the Internet Run Out of IPv4 Addresses?
• The Internet running out of IP addresses