Today the well of addresses on the Internet officially runs dry, but there's no need to panic. The exhaustion has been known about for years, and new addresses—which are designed not to run out for a long, long time—are already in operation.

The Number Resource Organization (NRO), and industry group made up of five regional Internet provider registries, held an event in Montevideo, Uruguay, today where members announced that it had today handed out the last of the available addresses on the old system.

"This is truly a major turning point in the on-going development of the Internet," said Rod Beckstrom, President and CEO of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the organization responsible for assigning IP addresses. "Nobody was caught off guard by this, the Internet technical community has been planning for... depletion for quite some time."