A few reassuring words are being spoken regarding the IPv6 changeover and just why the internet is not going to "spiral into the sun" just yet.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223064/IPv6_doomsday_won_t_hit_in_2012_experts_sayNext year will see one more regional Internet registry run out of IPv4 addresses, but 2012 will be more of a year to prepare for the inevitable shift to IPv6 than an Internet doomsday, according to networking experts.
When it comes to Internet addressing, the year now winding to a close may prove to have been the most significant for decades. On Feb. 3, the Internet Assigned Names and Numbers Authority (IANA) got out of the business of assigning blocks of IPv4 addresses, 30 years after that protocol debuted. As planned, IANA handed out one of its remaining five blocks of addresses -- each about 16 million addresses -- to each of the five regional registries, which serve Asia-Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America and Africa.
Though the clock is ticking on the remaining availability of new IPv4 addresses, people working on this transition assure users that they aren't likely to be cut off from either websites or Web viewers for quite some time.
So it looks like we have a bit more time left, party on folks