The European Commission wants a quarter of European industry, public authorities and households to use IPv6 by 2010.

"This is very much a case of a stitch in time saves nine," according to our Viv. "In the short term, businesses and public authorities might be tempted to try to squeeze their needs into the strait jacket of the old system, but this would mean Europe is badly placed to take advantage of the latest internet technology, and could face a crisis when the old system runs out of addresses. IPv6 provides more addresses in cyberspace than there are grains of sand on the world's beaches."

And a good place to start would be the EC's own europa.eu website, which is currently, er, not IPv6 compatible. It will be, apparently, by 2010. But then again, by that point - according to ICANN - there probably won't be many IPv4 addresses left. So the EC, and the rest of us, won't have a choice.