Vint Cerf, a Google vice-president credited with inventing the modern internet, said that the “unbelievable” trend could prevent UK businesses from communicating with their customers around the world and in the UK, and hold back the development of a new wave of connected devices.
He told delegates at an internet conference in London that it was “particularly embarrassing for the UK, which had played such a key role in the development of the internet” and said that Britain was a long way behind many other European countries including the Czech Republic.
Mr Cerf said that the final tranche of web addresses will be allocated between the organisations that provide them to individual customers in Spring next year, and that they would all be used up “sometime in 2012.” He warned that without the implementation of a new system, “we will run out – there will be address trade and attempts at hijacking.”
The bulk of the internet is currently based on a protocol called IPv4. A new version, called IPv6, is already established, but the majority of internet service providers have yet to turn it on. The two systems cannot talk to each other, so British users of IPv4 will need either new equipment or a software upgrade.
Mr Cerf criticised the short-sighted business decisions that had led to the situation arising, and opened an event to launch a Government-backed UK organisation called 6UK to encourage the adoption of IPv6.
“If you don’t do something about this the UK will not be able to reach the rest of the world that’s on v6,” Mr Cerf said. “It’s a business issue that’s of relevance to every company that uses the internet to do business. The ISP will be reduced to selling telephone without a telephone number.”
Asked whether there was enough time for UK businesses to address the problem, Mr Cerf replied: “Not really – it continues to boggle my mind that the UK hasn’t taken this up as an issue. People will ask why their new smart devices don’t work. All the promise and potential of these devices will fail if the ISPs don’t grasp this.”
Nigel Titley, chairman of 6UK, added: “There isn’t even a single Government website that’s IPv6 enabled as far as we know”. Mr Cerf suggested that more leadership was needed on the issue, rather than investment.
Speaking about plans recently announced by David Cameron, the prime minister, for East London to rival Silicon Valley, Mr Cerf said that the UK needed a “a fluid stock market, venture capital and a tolerance for failure”.
He said the British tolerance for failure was currently too damaging to reputation, but that “the desire” was there for greater success.
