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Interesting article in Wednesday's WSJ about numbers.
When Really Big Numbers Aren't Nearly Enough
The nine-digit Social Security Number is holding strong after 73 years. The 10-digit phone number is six decades old and counting. But the Internet will soon outlive its equivalent numbering system for identifying Web surfers and the sites they visit, which could have disruptive and costly consequences for life online.
As originally designed, Internet Protocol addresses contained 32 bits, represented in four sets of numbers from 0 to 255. There are 4.3 billion different possible combinations, which seemed like plenty to Vint Cerf, who helped develop the IP standards in the late 1970s.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124156880475489823.html#mod=todays_us_page_one
When Really Big Numbers Aren't Nearly Enough
The nine-digit Social Security Number is holding strong after 73 years. The 10-digit phone number is six decades old and counting. But the Internet will soon outlive its equivalent numbering system for identifying Web surfers and the sites they visit, which could have disruptive and costly consequences for life online.
As originally designed, Internet Protocol addresses contained 32 bits, represented in four sets of numbers from 0 to 255. There are 4.3 billion different possible combinations, which seemed like plenty to Vint Cerf, who helped develop the IP standards in the late 1970s.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124156880475489823.html#mod=todays_us_page_one
