The OECD meeting "The Future of the Internet Economy" will be held in Seoul in June. In preparation the OECD has released a report analyzing the rapid depletion of Internet Protocol version 4 - IPv4 addresses.

One of the major challenges for all stakeholders in thinking about the future of the Internet is its ability to scale to connect billions of people and devices. The objective of this report is to raise awareness among policy makers of capacity and limitations of the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), to provide information on the status of readiness and deployment of the Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and to demonstrate the need for all stakeholders, including governments, to play a part in IPv6 deployment.

The Internet has rapidly grown to become a fundamental infrastructure for economic and social activity around the world. The Internet Protocol (IP) specifies how communications take place between one device and another through an addressing system. The Internet technical community has successfully supported the Internet?s growth by managing IPv4 Internet addresses through open and transparent policy frameworks, for all networks to have address space sufficient to meet their needs. It has also developed a new version of the Internet Protocol between 1993 and 1998, IPv6, to accommodate additional growth.

There is now an expectation among some experts that the currently used version of the Internet Protocol, IPv4, will run out of previously unallocated address space in 2010 or 2011, as only 16% of the total IPv4 address space remains unallocated in early 2008. The situation is critical for the future of the Internet economy because all new users connecting to the Internet, and all businesses that require IP addresses for their growth, will be affected by the change from the current status of ready availability of unallocated IPv4 addresses.

IPv6, on the other hand, vastly expands the available address space and can help to support the proliferation of broadband, of Internet-connected mobile phones and sensor networks, as well as the development of new types of services. Beyond additional address space, IPv6 adoption is being driven by public sector procurement mandates, by deployment of innovative products and services, by its better support for a mobile Internet, as well as by the decreased network complexity that it allows.