So What is Your IP Address? And is it IPv4 or IPv6?

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Today’s Blog Post


So What is Your IP Address? And is it IPv4 or IPv6?

Most people have no clue as to what is taking place on or in their computer. Nor do they understand who they are on the Internet.

If you are reading this then you are a number. Do you know it and how valuable is it to know it?

I am 98.124.11.*** (the *** is added to protect my own publication of my actual address from normal people) it does nothing to protect me from the more professionals.

In your search engine(browser) and the search area – a small line that lets you ask a question or looks something up… type in “what is my IP Address”. Bingo it will take you to a web site that will show your IP address… and if all goes as I suspect it will – it will show you your IP address. That is the exact name of your computer. And no other computer has that number… just you.

Now at that site you can type in an email address and it will show you exactly where your internet provider is. That is if you are using a Service Provider’s email account.

My friend Winston uses a local Service Provider, the same as mine, and he uses the email address that they provide. Immediately it showed me that he was in our local area.

My email address that I often use is a GMail account and it shows that I am in Mountainview, California… but the Moutainview folk know where the GMail account is located actually… as it is connected to another account.

My point is that I am well known in the Internet world… pin pointed down to my Service Provider – who then knows exactly where I live.

Now here is the problem… there are only so many possibilities that you can make addresses from ***.***.***.*** - with each star being a number of 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

The fact is that now there are actually so many people/computers with IP addresses… that they are running out.

How could that ever happen?

Well it seems now that the number is now approaching 4 Billion Machines/People that are on the Internet… and the number base using the four sets of three numbers is almost used up. In fact it is estimated that by September 9, 2011 it will be full.

The system that has been used is entitled the IPv4. But they are now introducing the IPv6 that will increase the total number base to some where way up in the Trillions… that is 1000 of times over the Billion mark.

That makes little or no sense to you. There are not that many people in the world. How could there be the need for that many numbers? Well the answer is simple – people may have more than one computer and communicator over the Internet. The machines will have taken over.

The secondary thing to realize is that you have little or no privacy now. It is easily understood where you go on the Internet, what places you have visited and places that you frequent. The Era of Big Brother has arrived. In the old book I think it was to be 1984. Instead it happened about 10 years later… and is very much in place now.

Should you be concerned?

Nope. Not really. This is just something to talk over when you have coffee today.

For anyone over 65 you likely have no idea what the heck I am talking about anyway. It is like a dinosaur uncovering a cell phone.. one sniff and he knows it is not for him.

But your grand kids will know and will be able to design/work in that world.

Yesterday in our “New Friends” group( a group of Seniors I meet with each week) we discussed some of this. Most people in the group witnessed the very first commercial airplane flights. Their parents actually were alive when the very first flight by Orville and Wilbur Wright was made.

We discussed the new possibilities of how the new Cyber World was affecting them.

This past week through Facebook and my presence there, my mom received some old photo graphs that were taken when she was young. These were Black and White photos for sure.

My cousin and I have contributed to a Facebook Group that is all about our roots in Truax, Saskatchewan. I first placed some photos there about Truax. Then others started placing more photos in the same album.

One of my distant cousins that I have never met, placed the photos on that album as well. I did a right click and then came to my computer. I placed them on my memory stick and took them to the Grocery Store where they have an instant print machine that in matter of seconds were printed for me.

The old Black and White photos once snapped on a box camera in the last century have flown around the world a few times to arrive safely in my mother’s hands in the next century.

If you try to comprehend what this description I have just written above means to you… nothing probably and you know something about your computer… try to imagine the look on the Senior’s faces yesterday… at an average age of 90+… They couldn’t understand.

I am galloping toward a future that I know only a little bit about. If I don’t hang on it will pass me and leave me behind completely.

Fast forward about 10 years from now. I will likely be a little slower.

My grandson will be sitting beside me with his newest electronic gadget and trying to show the old geezer what he has in his hands. I will turn to him and ask him… “So what is your IP Address? Is it run under the IPv6 or IPv8… I just heard that they are considering the IPv10 system – is that right?”

Oh boy… I can’t wait.

~ Murray Lincoln ~
http://www.murraylincoln.com/

Source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/10105978.stm
http://whatismyipaddress.com/