Will the 'new Y2K bug' strike?

Will it be digital apocalypse in 2011? In less than three years, the digital world will run out of internet addresses, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. More than 85 per cent of the available internet addresses have already been taken.

The current Internet Protocol (IP) address system was set up in 1981, and little did the creators realise that the world would run through 4.3 billion addresses in just three decades. Once these addresses are exhausted, new connections and services will be impossible to obtain.

The answer is upgrading to the 'next-generation protocol' or Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). The transition is critical given the skyrocketing demand for wireless devices that require their own IP addresses.

The new protocol has many advantages over the previous version – not least that it will expand the internet address space to an astronomical 340 trillion trillion trillion.

But the world is dragging its feet over the deployment of IPv6. Some experts claim the problem with IPv6 lies in the new system's compatibility with the existing version. Others blame the cost factor, which – as it requires new domain names, servers and more bandwidth – is substantial.

However, high costs have little to do with why countries such as the US are lagging to overhaul their networks. Critics say the US has not felt 'motivated enough' simply because it received the lion's share when the IPv4 addresses were distributed 30 years ago.

Countries such as Japan, Korea and China are spearheading the deployment of IPv6. China will test mobile devices, transport and security systems running on IPv6 at the Olympics.

In the UAE, there is a dedicated group looking specifically at this issue. Mustapha Guirari of the UAE IPv6 Task Force is not too worried about the cost factor as "most businesses and government organisations have the equipment that supports IPv6". As time runs out, "the major cost will be on the learning side, which involves training the developers and the networking personnel", he told me.

It will be interesting to watch if the world has learnt any lesson from the millennium's original bug – the Y2K – or if we'll wake up at the eleventh hour to race against time to upgrade to new addresses and avert internet meltdown.

Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. Those interested in tracking the countdown clock for the digital doomsday can log on to www.penrose.uk6x.com