YNOT — Unless businesses and governments upgrade to IPv6, and soon, the internet could run out of space for new domains, the European Commission warned this week.A survey conducted by the commission indicated just 17 percent of the government, industry and educational organizations across Europe, the Middle East and Asia have upgraded from the previous IPv4 to the new addressing protocol, endangering the usability of the infrastructure.

Although most users think of domain names in language like “www.ynot.com,” each actually is a collection of numbers translated for convenience (since people typically think in words, not figures). IPv4 is based on a 32-bit standard, limiting the available internet protocol addresses to a maximum of about 4.3 billion distinct numerical locations. IPv6, on the other hand, uses a 128-bit system, which expands the potential list of addresses almost infinitely. Experts estimate IPv6 could allow a distinct Web address for every blade of grass on the planet.

“In the last 10 years, the internet has become hugely important worldwide from a socio-economic perspective,” Detlef Eckert, a director in the commission’s information society and media directorate-general, noted in a prepared statement. “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.”

Network administrators are even more concerned.

“We’ll be down to our last tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Web addresses by the end of next year,” Sam Pickles, lead enterprise engineer of F5 Networks, told the U.K.’s Telegraph. “New companies looking to establish a presence on the internet will have no option but to adopt the IPv6 address format. Many government and military organizations worldwide have adopted IPv6 for their internal systems already, and its adoption by companies, and eventually home users, is virtually certain.”

What he called a “significant investment” required to make the change may be holding some companies and internet service providers back, Pickles told the Telegraph.

“Some additional spending will be required to migrate to the new addressing format and ensure that systems using the old IPv4 format can interface with new IPv6 networks,” he said. “Initial installation of new equipment will most likely affect systems at the edge of the corporate network interfacing with the internet, such as routers and firewalls.”

Consumers, too, will be affected by the change. Eventually they will need to update older equipment or risk being locked out of a significant portion of the Web.

“Consumers will eventually also need to replace equipment in the home, although this is likely to be introduced by ISPs in gradual stages,” Pickles told the Telegraph. “The most likely device needing replacement initially will be the home broadband router, connected to the phone line.”