Next-gen Internet protocol launched

ICANN, the U.S. body overseeing Web site allocations globally, has launched a new technology that will allow virtually unlimited Internet addresses, its chairman told Reuters on Tuesday.

Vinton Cerf of the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said the next-generation protocol, IPv6, had been added to its root server systems, making it possible for every person or device to have an Internet protocol address.

Rapid growth in the use of the World Wide Web has in recent times prompted concerns about future scarcity of domain addresses, with demand threatening to overload the existing system, the IPv4.

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"This is a big, big step," Cerf said, speaking on sidelines of ICANN's annual conference held in the Malaysian capital.

Los Angeles-based ICANN was given the job of overseeing the Internet's naming and numbering system globally by the U.S. government.

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Cerf said about two-thirds of the 4.3 billion Internet addresses currently available were used up, adding that IPv6 could magnify capacity by some "25,000 trillion trillion times".

He said the IPv6 system would run parallel to IPv4 for about 20 years to ensure that any bugs or system errors were weeded out.