Web running out of addresses

The number of internet addresses could run out by 2010, the man who invented the system has warned.

Fewer than 14 per cent of the 4.2billion addresses provided when the internet system was founded in 1977 remain.

Vint Cerf, the "father of the internet", said that businesses and consumers now needed to switch to a new system, IPv6.

Every computer that is connected to the internet is given a unique IP address. But the proliferation of other devices, particularly mobiles, that can access the web has eaten into the number of addresses. The new system has 340 trillion available.