I was reading an article recently ((where “recently” is relative to when I started writing this, not when I actually published it…)) about the challenges in getting IPv6 up and running – before we finally run out of IPv4 addresses, and can’t plug anything else into the internet. One big change would be the end of address sharing – NAT – since there’ll be enough IPv6 addresses for every computer in your house to have a globally unique address. NAT is annoying, and in general we’ll be better off without it, but if every device is visible to the whole internet, there are some interesting implications which will only be advantages if we work out how to harness them. So here is my optimist’s guide to next year’s internet…
Tag: future
A couple of years ago, when IMP (“what later turned out to be the BBC iPlayer”) was still in closed previews, and I started building my over-complicated watch-PC-on-TV setup, I formed the opinion that the future of TV was not “Digital”, it was “Internet-based”. An article in Saturday’s Grauniad suggests that things are still heading in that direction, and reminded me of my prediction that the “channel” as we know it will not be with us much longer.