On Thursday the very last few IP addresses were solemnly handed out from the dusty ration-pack first stuffed by DARPA in the ‘60s with a seemingly huge four billion quad-octets freshly dug from their mathematical mine somewhere under Area 51. So what happens now? Do we all have to go on an Internet diet? No! IPv6 our saviour has been waiting in the wings for over 10 years now, listlessly polishing it’s shining armour and only held back by the catch-22 of forwards compatibility which plagues the transition to any new technology.

Hang on – we’ve heard this story before at least five years ago “The interwebs has almost run out of phone numbers!” but of course we are always saved by band-aids such as NAT. Somehow today, this news sounds much more final.

Let’s just hope the scare tactics of this obviously well planned media event will shake the industry into adoption of the new protocol that will keep us happily downloading lolz until we have a galactic empire spanning several galaxies before we headslap and exclaim “Why…? Why did they design it with only 340 trillion, trillion, trillion addresses? What were they thinking!”