OTTAWA — Swelling numbers of iPads, e-readers and laptops are quickly swallowing up the limited space for IP addresses on the Internet.

That's raising fears that Canadians will see the types of slowdowns and glitches that were predicted with the Y2K bug.

The problem stems from the birth of the Internet, when its inventors assumed that four billion numeric addresses would be plenty.

They weren't counting on tweens from Toronto to Tibet exhausting those addresses with their iPhones, BlackBerrys and Kindles.

There's almost no room left on the Internet for new computers and gadgets and Canadian Internet service providers are competing rather than co-operating to solve the problem.

A new, spacious version of the Internet is available but many ISPs waited too long to upgrade.

Canadians could see problems when the space expires and ISPs make customers straddle the old Internet and the new Internet.