Geoff Huston, senior Internet research scientist from Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (Apnic), belongs to the IPv4 camp.

"We happen to work in an industry that survives on complexity, address scarcity and insecurity," Geoff Huston, senior Internet research scientist at Apnic, said. "This is where the margins come from, and we are not innovators in this industry any more. We've learnt that optimism doesn't create a business case. All those people disappeared along with the dotcom boom," he said.

Internet Protocol Version 6 is a backwards-compatible replacement for the current Internet protocol, and which boasts inbuilt mobility, quality, manageability and security. Its main selling point is that it will increase available address space from about 4 x 109 to 3 x 1038 unique IP addresses, allowing for nearly unlimited numbers of systems and networks.

Huston, who worked at Telstra before joining Apnic, said that although IPv4 as we once knew it has died, and that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) will one day run out of IPv4 addresses, the industry will continue to find ways to market hoarded and unused addresses and make IPv4 continue to work through devices like Network Address Translation (NAT) boxes.

"The death of IPv4 has not really killed the Internet. In fact, far from it, we've managed to make an industry around it. We've already created a business around where we are, not where we want to be. Skype is not a charity and it works in all of this muck. If it couldn't work, complain to me, but as long as it works, I don't see the problem," he said.