The world is about to run out of the internet addresses that allow computers to identify each other and communicate, the man who invented the system has told The Times. Vint Cerf, the “father of the internet” and one of the world’s leading computer scientists, said that businesses and consumers needed to act now to switch to the next generation of net addresses. Unless preparations were made now, he said, some computers might not be able to go online and the connectivity of the internet might be damaged.