You may have used the term IP or even IP address, probably without knowing exactly what it is. That’s okay; lots of people use terms they don’t understand. For example, the U.S. Congress refers to “balancing the budget” all the time and they have no clue. But I digress.

Regarding IP addresses, the issue of concern is that the known universe is about to run out of them. And soon. Yes, this is like the US Post Office running of mailboxes. Very similar.

IP stands for Internet Protocol. A protocol describes the methods and rules by which things are done in a computer (and in real life, but rarely in Congress). For my discussion here, the thing that the IP does is provide an address for every computer on a network. On the Internet, that means that every computer connected to the Internet has its own IP address. That’s a gazillion computers, give or take.

The IP address is similar to the address you use to send mail. For sending mail, you specify the recipient’s name, street number, street name, city state, and zip code. Of that group, the ZIP code is most similar to a computer’s IP address. Unlike a ZIP code, however, you cannot determine a computer’s location by its IP address. Nope, the IP address merely shows a computer’s unique identity on a network, not where it is.

There’s more IP trivia I could toss your way, but naaaa. You can determine your computer’s local network address by using your computer’s networking software. (Though the value is not that easy to find in Windows; refer to my books for the long, detailed directions.) On the Internet, you can determine the your computer’s Internet IP address by going to the web site whatismyip.com.

Technically, the IP address is known as IPv4. That’s the fourth version of the Internet Protocol. It sets up the IP address as a series of four numbers, ranging from 0 through 255. For example:

123.0.10.255

You’ve most likely seen something similar to that before and didn’t know what it was. Now you do.

The problem with the IPv4 scheme is that it only provides for a total of 4,294,967,296 unique addresses. That may seem like a lot, but consider the exploding global economy. There are millions of computer users, web sites, and servers around the planet. Because of that, computer scientists are claiming that we will run out of IP addresses as soon as the year 2010.

Don’t panic! The solution is something called IPv6. I’ll be discussing what that means in my next blog entry.

Blogroll. If you have some time, check out Douglas’ blog, DouglasTECH. He has some worthy tips and computer info in there.

Scary Disk Encryption Vulnerabilities. Wow. This video floored me. When I was first instructed in computers, I learned that RAM does not clear its contents immediately. Apparently the bad guys know this as well. Evil! Evil I tells ya!