World leaders warned on imminent internet seizure

Experts speaking at international ministerial conference this week warned that urgent action was needed to prevent the internet becoming irrevocably gummed up.

Delegates at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Future of the Internet Economy, were told by Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for the information society that global action was needed to accelerate the move to IPv6

"We indeed risk falling short of internet addresses within 3 years," she said. Failure to urgently upgrade to IPv6 would undermine the global economy, said Geoff Huston, chief scientist of the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, which manages address allocation within the region.

"The simple observation is that we really should be well into a transition across the entire industry by now, and we are nowhere near that point," he added.

Huston also told delegates that the cost of upgrading the internet's infrastructure was far outweighed by the costs of not doing so.

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