With IPv4 having completely been depleted of unique addresses, currently just recycling unused ones, it is imperative to implement a solution to meet the demands of increasing Internet users. Last year, a total of 4.66 Internet users were tallied, and this number is expected to grow in the coming years as people become more dependent on the Internet and mobile devices.
To resolve this, the world is slowly transitioning to IPv6, which can generate trillions of addresses. With IPv6, it would be 58,000 years before all of its addresses will run out, making it more than adequate to resolve the IPv4 issue. However, the transition to IPv6 should be faster, and both individuals and corporations should be made aware of this.
Technological expert Latif Ladid, founding president of the IPv6 Forum, co-founder and co-chair of the IEEE 5G World Forum, Emeritus Trustee of the Internet Society, Steering Committee member of IEEE Blockchain Initiative and member of the United Nations Strategy Council, explains why moving to IPv6 is necessary in his keynote presentation at Day 2 of the recently concluded BSV Global Blockchain Convention in Dubai.
“We should not use network address translation because that’s what we are using today, so this is cutting basically the end-to-end concept. And in some places, you can find 2,000 people using the same IP address. So, if somebody’s a criminal, then most probably the police is going to pick up the wrong guy. Otherwise, they have to collect all these 2,000 guys to find the right guy. So it’s very, very important to have that single identity,” Ladid said.
This single identity means having a unique IP address assigned to each individual Internet user, which will allow for peer-to-peer communication to occur. This will be highly significant to usher in the Fifth Industrial Revolution predicted to be a period when artificial intelligence (AI), augmented and virtual realities (AR/VR), robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT) will flourish.
The rate of adoption of the fusion of IPv6 and a proper peer-to-peer network will determine whether this happens within years or decades. But there is no denying that the Fifth Industrial Revolution is coming, it is just a question of when.
IPv6 Leader Works with Bitcoin Creator
Why the sudden mention of Bitcoin? It seems that many people—most of them working within the digital currency space—have forgotten. The Bitcoin white paper written by Satoshi Nakamoto, who has been proven to be nChain Chief Scientist Craig Wright, is entitled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.”
However, when Wright uses the term “Bitcoin,” he is not actually pertaining to the BTC network, touted by the majority as the original Bitcoin; but he is instead, referring to Bitcoin SV (BSV). While BTC has continued to refuse to scale and became content with it being used as speculative investment by those who can afford to trade it, BSV has restored Bitcoin’s original protocol and design, unlocking its blockchain’s ability for limitless scaling.
This is because the truly peer-to-peer network designed by Wright is already prime for scaling. And BSV continues to stay true to Wright’s vision of Bitcoin scaling in order to have low transaction fees, so it can be used by everyone—not just the privileged few.
“So, we’re going to talk about Bitcoin. It’s not as complex as people make up. It’s a ledger. It records things. It should scale. It should be cheap. There’s a reason for this, because most of the world’s population can’t afford things when they’re expensive. We don’t need solutions to help the rich do banking. Really. We’ve had those for a long time,” Wright began.
“We need solutions to help people who aren’t included in the global economy. We need a way of making machines talk to machines cheaply, so that we can actually start implementing these globally. IoT is going to be taking off, and we don’t want a series of walled gardens owned by a few large corporations. We want interoperable systems… so people could talk to people,” Wright added.
IPv6 makes possible single identities, which in turn, enable peer-to-peer communication that creates the perfect setting for scaling. And this is why Ladid and Wright—both giants in their respective fields—are working together. And when great minds work together, the results are revolutionary.
A World of Good
The overarching theme of the BSV Global Blockchain Convention is how a scalable blockchain or peer-to-peer network can do the world a whole lot of good. And the possibilities are endless when it is combined with IPv6.
“If I want to be able to trace a source of meat from end to end, so that in the future, if something like the mad cow incident in Britain happens, rather than killing practically every cow in the country, I can monitor the individual farms, and pick and choose and have a surgical response—saving millions of farmers millions of farms. We can do that,” Wright revealed.
“To do this, we need direct communications, and the only way to do that is IPv6. IPv4 isn’t going to work. It isn’t going to allow all of us to communicate. It isn’t going to support mobile IP. It will never do it because it’s not going to scale,” Wright added.
Key to making this transition to IPv6 and peer-to-peer communication is educating both the general population and big businesses about the need for this technological fusion to be adopted. The sooner global adoption is achieved, the sooner people will get to experience its wonders.
“So, when you have the technology, at the beginning, it’s 80% work and 20% promotion. When the technology matures, it’s the other way around. It’s promotion, education, and so on—winning the regulators, getting the government to buy your solution. So, the promotion and the education are now very critical. So, this kind of conference here is really a very good example of how to get the right message [across],” Ladid concluded.
Get ahead and be educated. Watch the entire BSV Global Blockchain Convention here.
