Internet of Things & The IP Address Shortage

The experts at Cisco calculate that total network traffic on the Internet will increase nine times (9x) by 2013 from 5 exabytes a month in 2007, to 56 exabytes a month in 2013. What does that mean in layman's terms? It means that by next year (2010), 35 million devices will be connected to the Internet. That's about six aircraft per person worldwide. By 2013, Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior forecasts that the number of devices connected to the Internet will reach 1 trillion, up from 500 million in 2007.


How is such astonishing growth possible? Originally, computers typically were networked only to local area networks, to allow users to communicate with one another within their own companies. Today though, there is an "always on" mentality - those same past users of limited local area networks now consider it their birthright to communicate with everybody, everywhere, "always". Most of these communications now take place over the Internet, via the 1 billion (and growing) Internet-connected networked computers worldwide. With the emergence of smartphones, Android, RIM and Apple have exploded the number of Internet-connected devices even further. This global number of Internet-connected cell phones is accelerating, surpassing the number of Internet-connected computers. A tertiary wave of Internet-connected devices - sensors - is expected to overtake them both. Computers, smartphones, sensor devices - there is an Internet-connected device population bomb.

• Internet-Connected Sensor Devices

The next wave of Internet-connected devices will be small sensors embedded in just about everything... and placed just about everywhere.... For example, The 2010-2014Harbor Industry Report forecasts growth in "health monitoring devices on the body, telematics in vehicles for safety, automated service scheduling, and driver convenience as well as smart grid equipment and meters that can monitor real-time electricity usage -- all delivered via the Internet." As well, most of next year's anticipated energy management devices and water management devices will each require their own Internet address (known as an Internet Protocol (IP) address).

By being part of the Internet, these devices can connect with web services and thus can be both managed and monitored remotely. They also can connect to one another, in what is called machine-to-machine (MSM) deployments. Machine-to-machine deployments go far beyond typical business applications, reshaping entire industries. For example, one solution expected to require an M2M deployment is the creation of the Smart Energy Grid. To accomplish a national Smart Energy Grid, the United States will need millions of sensor devices to communicate with one another over the Internet. Similarly, commercial solutions involving networked security cameras and sensors connected to home appliances and HVAC equipment, ITS infrastructure for traffic and parking management, etc. each such sensor will require their own IP address (device address).

A post on Harbor's Smart Systems blog states: "As Moore's law takes over and the price of embedding intelligence and connectivity into devices continues to fall, networked devices will push further and further into the mainstream. This process is somewhat self-reinforcing as low prices are driven by high quantities, and vice versa, making these devices increasingly prevalent in our lives and businesses."

• We're Running out of Network Addresses

This is a highly desirable future, but it will come at a cost. Our current IP addressing scheme, known as IP version 4 (IPV4) was never meant to handle the coming demand for addresses! Soon, the IPV4 addressing scheme will no longer function properly, because there will be no new addresses to hand out to new devices on the Internet. The addresses will run out. A similar point was reached by the US ZIP Code addressing scheme, and so it was upgrade with a four digit extension. So too, there is an upgrade for the IPV4 addressing schema.

• The Answer: A System-Wide Upgrade to IPV6

To handle this ever-increasing need for device addresses, a new networking standard has been developed known as IP v6 (IPV6). IPV6 ensures that there will be enough IP addresses for every known star in the universe by supporting 4.8 trillion IP addresses. However, progress to this new standard is slow, so you can help by voting for IPV6 the next time you purchase a device. The transition of the Internet to IPv6 is the only practical and readily-available long-term solution to IPv4 address exhaustion. Although the predicted IPv4 address exhaustion is approaching its final stages, most ISP software vendors and service providers were just beginning IPv6 deployment back in 2008...