Internet will officially run out of old system IPs' at 12:01am GMT on Wednesday

Sydney, June 4 (ANI): The Internet will undergo a major upgrade in the coming week as the number of IP addresses under the old system have been exhausted, according to a report.

The Internet system will shift to a new standard that allows for a trillion IP addresses, up from the currently available four billion.

The switch will occur on Wednesday at 12:01am GMT, News.com.au reports.

According to the report, the launch of 'World IPv6', will see web operators and others switch permanently to the new system from the existing standard, IPv4.

A test of the system was held last year, and the he full transition will take several years.

Till then old IPv4 devices and networks should continue to function as before, the report said.

Every internet connected computer, smartphone, car, gadget and gizmo is assigned an IP address made up of four sets of digits which allows it to communicate with the net.

With about seven billion people on the planet, the IPv4 protocol does not allow for everyone to have a gadget with its own online address.

The situation has been equated to not having enough telephone numbers for every user.

Cisco predicts that by 2016, there will be nearly 18.9 billion network connections, or nearly 2.5 connections for each person on earth, compared with 10.3 billion in 2011.

If there are not enough addresses, neighbors will have to start sharing IP addresses, which can slow things down. (ANI)