If you have a company that wants a new Internet address, you better act soon.
"The U.S. organization that distributes some of the Internet’s most important virtual property [the American Registry for Internet Numbers] is running out of inventory,"
writes Robert McMillan of The Wall Street Journal.
"Some savvy companies have been stocking up, but the shortage could mean headaches — and significant costs — for U.S. businesses looking to expand on the Internet."
The pool of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses is on pace to disappear this summer.
"Enterprises that don’t have a plan for what to do with this will have this brought up by their board," James Cowie, chief scientist at Dyn, an Internet consulting firm, told the newspaper.
IP addresses function like phone numbers and are distinct from domain names, such as those ending in .com and .org. The IP addresses are used whenever data are transmitted across the Internet.
Elsewhere on the Internet front, Steve Beaman, chairman of the Society to Advance Financial Education,
told Newsmax TV that recent Internet neutrality rules will create major problems.
The Federal Communications Commission decided Thursday to treat the Internet like a public utility and to forbid Internet service providers from charging content providers extra to speed transmission of that content.
Beaman cited two objections on Newsmax TV's "MidPoint" show. "First of all, in the most open administration in our history, they hid a 350-page regulatory document from the public while they passed this," he said. "So this is another example of we'll wait to see what's in the law after they pass it."
Second, "there are going to be severe, unintended consequences from this, and I get a little bit concerned for the future of the net because of this," Beaman said.
"Right now you and I have a pretty good Skype connection, and that's because I pay extra for higher bandwidth. Well, this net neutrality regulation will eliminate the ability of the companies to charge me for that extra bandwidth, so guess what, it won't be there."
And what of the government's guarantee of copious bandwidth for all in the land?
"That's what they said when they regulated airlines, that's what they said when they regulated the phone companies," Beaman said.
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