Internet census taken

Researchers based in the US have taken a wide-ranging census of the internet's 2.8 billion addresses.

"Pings" were sent to each address by researchers at the Southern California Information Sciences Institute (ISI). The effort, which took 62 days, was the first of its kind to be carried out in the last two decades. John Heidemann, an ISI project leader, said: "An internet census is just that: every single assigned address in the entire internet was sent a probe."

"Internet census data is useful for several reasons. As the internet use becomes widespread, we are running out of internet addresses." By 2010 all internet addresses may already be taken up, Mr Heidemann added.

The Internet Engineering Task Force has seen the problem coming and has developed a protocol, dubbed IPv6, to solve it, however "deployment has been slow", Mr Heidemann continued. An internet census highlights the need to speed up the process, he said.