Geek Chow: Facebook, Google, and Yahoo to change the way they run web addresses. For a day.
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Geek Chow: Facebook, Google, and Yahoo to change the way they run web addresses. For a day.
It seems we’re running out of web addresses and unless something is done, we’ll have used them all up by November. Not URLs, mind you, there are endless possibilities when you use letters. No, we’re talking about the IP addresses, the unique numerical designation for each web site and device. There’s hope: the world needs to shift over to a completely new system called IPv6 that expands the number of digits in an IP address and expands the number of possible IP addresses by trillions. Vint Cerf, a founding father of the internet, is leading a push to designate June 8, 2011 as “World IPv6 Day” to raise awareness. Google, Facebook, and Yahoo are all on the old system but will switch over for a day to try it out.
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