I couldn’t find it. Everything around me looked so
unfamiliar. I could have sworn when I turned the corner that this was the
street where I lived. I have often walked down this street before and all that
jazz. But I hadn’t. At least I don’t think so. The frontages of the homes
looked different and the numbers on the mailboxes were unfamiliar. I ran back
to the corner and on to the train station. Wasn’t this where I’d just got off?
Even that had started to look different. So I sprinted at the speed of light –
thank goodness this was the virtual world – and went to the next corner to see
if my favourite coffee shop was still there. It had been this morning….but wait,
it had changed too, Subtly, but it wasn’t the same and the number on the
entrance was different. Was this some ghastly dream?
This couldn’t be happening, I thought. I wandered to the
park and sat down on a bench. The light in the park seemed different, as though
it were the same park but lit by another moon. Then it hit me. Was it possible
that I was caught in some dreadful time warp? Had I gone into a kind of Rip Van
Winkle sleep in cyberspace only to find that I came back to a different
dimension? Where was my familiar address string that I was so used to?
I took a hold on myself. ‘Don’t panic!’ I told myself and
retraced my footsteps to the house where I knew I’d lived. I ignored the
longer-stringed digital address that glowed on my mailbox and walked in. I knew
I had mail – I’d seen the red light flashing on the box. I walked into a home
that was mine and yet different. It was sleeker and it looked like everything
was going to work a lot faster than before. I gestured at the large all-in-one
screen and it came to life with a different light.
‘Welcome to the world of IPv6’
So had I slept while they made that leap from IPv4 to IPv6?
I must have!
Soon, very soon, Internet addresses as we know them will
have had their day. And we have to embrace a new world and a new address
virtually.
