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It's hard to predict how long it will be before these eventual customers of IPv4 addresses will be unable to get them easily.

"The rate of further regional assignment will depend on regional demand, which is accelerating faster in some parts of the world (Asia/Pacific) than others (Africa)," said Alain Durand, director of software engineering at network equipment maker Juniper Networks. "Some service providers may exhaust their IPv4 addresses within 3 to 6 months, while others will exhaust them perhaps over a longer period, depending on the rate at which they are allocated."

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Today there is room for about 4.3 billion Web addresses. About 1.2 billion of them are controlled by users in the United States. In the new scheme, Web addresses will be made up of 128 bits of information, unlike the 32 bits used today, and a vastly greater number of addresses will be available. As all - and I mean all - communications begin to take advantage of Internet technology, these improvements will have a fundamental impact on our ability to get things done in society. Every cellphone could have a unique Web address, for instance. More importantly, v6, as it's known among the experts, will allow us to do things we simply haven't imagined before. Because it can assign a unique Internet address to anything electronic, it can tie in sensors in our homes, vehicles and even under our skin.