London: The European commission has warned that the world might run out of web addresses by next year, unless urgent action is taken to switch to a new generation of net addresses. The commission says that businesses urgently need to upgrade to Internet protocol version six or IPv6, a new version of the Internet's addressing protocol, which will hugely increase the number of available addresses, according to PTI.

IPv6 has already been around since a decade and is providing 340 trillion, trillion, trillion web addresses. But many companies are still not migrating to the new platform. A survey conducted by the European Commission reveals that many companies are ready to switch from their current IPv4 to IPv6 but still haven't done so, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The IPv4 and IPv6 protocols refer to the way in which web addresses are created and assigned. Each website has a unique IP address, represented by a string of numbers, such as 192.168.1.1, which are then given a user-friendly web address to make them easier to remember. The IPv4 protocol uses 32-bit addresses, which enables the web to support around 4.3 billion unique addresses while IPv6 uses 128-bit web addresses, creating billions of possible new web addresses.

In the survey, European Commission also found that out of the 610 government, educational and other industry organizations questioned across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, just 17 percent have upgraded to IPv6.

The Commission has warned that the timely deployment of the protocol is vital to the growth and stability of the Internet. "In the last 10 years, the Internet has become hugely important worldwide from a socio-economic perspective. Only by ensuring that all devices connected to the internet are compatible with IPv6 can we stay connected and safeguard sustainable growth of the Internet and the global digital economy, now and in the years to come," said Detlef Eckert, Director in Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate-General.