Internet Armageddon is my mistake, says Google chief

MELBOURNE: Google's chief internet evangelist, Vint Cerf, has said that the world is going to run out of internet addresses 'within weeks' and it will be all his fault.

The 'father of the Internet', who created the web protocol, IPv4, that connects computers globally, said he had no idea that his "experiment" in 1977 "wouldn't end," reports the Age.

"I thought it was an experiment and I thought that 4.3 billion [addresses] would be enough to do an experiment," he said in a group interview with Fairfax journalists.

The protocol underpinning the net, known as IPv4, provides only about 4 billion IP addresses-not website domain names, but the unique sequence of numbers assigned to each computer, website or other internet-connected device.

The explosion in the number of people, devices and web services on the Internet means there are only a few million left.

The allocation of those addresses is set to run out very shortly but the industry is moving towards a new version, called IPv6, which will offer trillions of addresses for every person on the planet.

"Who the hell knew how much address space we needed? "It doesn't mean the network stops, it just means you can't build it very well," he added.