
No more addresses: Asia-Pacific region IPv4 well runs dry - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/no-more-addresses-asia-pacific-region-ipv4-well-runs-dry.ars
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trout
This is really the best part of the article: "In the meantime, the clock is
ticking for the RIPE NCC, which handles Europe, the Middle East, and the
former Soviet Union. RIPE still has some 65 million addresses left—almost
exactly the number it gave out last year. RIPE has a similar final /8 policy
to APNIC, so Europe may be looking at a Christmas stocking with no IPv4
addresses in it by the end of 2011. Of course if ISPs rush to submit their
last, big requests, it could happen sooner.

LACNIC in Latin America and the Caribbean and AfriNIC in Africa dish out
relatively few IPv4 addresses every year, so they are good for several more
years. ARIN, which handles North America, does give out a lot more addresses,
but somehow managed to get the long end of the stick: not only does it have 61
million regular addresses left, but it also "administers" 75 million unused
legacy addresses (given out before the RIPE NCC, APNIC and ARIN were formed).
So North America should be good, IPv4-wise, for a couple more years. Maybe
even longer. "

I haven't seen this type of analysis in any of the other IPv6 articles and is
really the most important variable. Growth is important too, but I think it
takes a back seat to availability and run rate. It's good to hear ARIN has
some super secret addresses.

If we keep going at our current rate we'll probably see some of the RIRs run
out of addresses. However, I think between ISPs buying back addresses, B2B IP
address sales, and other IP market dynamics will extend the life. If the
Microsoft deal is a signal, IP addresses are currently around $11, if bought
in bulk. If I could put stock in IP address price, I'd be long right now.

~~~
pieter
The managers of the RIRs themselves are more pessimistic, and I'd expect them
to have run a bit more analysis on this than the writers of this article. For
example, RIPE predicts they'll exhaust in September [1], and ARIN is also
expected to exhaust within a year [2].

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12306573> [2]
[http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/news/article.php/3...](http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/news/article.php/3923031/Last-
of-the-IPv4-Addresses-Allocated.htm)

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mjallday
In Singapore it's been the norm for consumers to be NAT'd behind a shared IP
for a while now. Sometimes when it's really busy you need to enter captchas on
just about every site to prove you're not a bot.

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dendory
Actually they thought they would hold out a bit longer but APNIC surprisingly
assigned a whole bunch of IPs for 'experimentation' altho in reality they are
probably 'dirty' and will be cleaned up for re-assignment later on.

Anyways, as of now, the only IPs that APNIC has is reserved for IPv4 to IPv6
transition. What that means is anyone in their region cannot request an IPv4
IP, unless it's for the express purpose to do conversion to IPv6.

This will happen to all regions of the world within the next year.

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ancymon
I think it's first time this year I heard about the end of IPs. Such news tend
to come out every few months. Quite often for a thing that won't have such a
big impact on "normal" people...

~~~
bittermang
Previous reports were the pending exhaustion of available IP addresses based
on projections of current use vs. the remaining number.

This is the first report of actually running out. No more speculation. Out. No
more. Reserved.

~~~
djcapelis
To be fair it actually means they've cracked open their last /8 and they're
_almost_ out.

It won't take them that long to exhaust this last space, but there _are_ for
the moment, still addresses available from APNIC for the Asian Pacific region.
These new addresses have gone into the last phase of contingency rules though,
and are available under a different procedure than has allowed people to
request IPs from APNIC in the past.

Also it should be noted once again that this just effects the asia/pacific
region. ARIN, RIPE, LACNIC and AfriNIC are still allocating addresses. Though
most of them have applied some form of exhaustion rules. In these regions, IPs
are not projected to run out for months yet and in the case of AfriNIC, years.

~~~
pieter
No, as stated in this article, this last /8 is special and they'll only hand
out 1024 addresses ONCE for every APNIC member. Effectively they've run out,
these addresses can only be used for transitioning purposes, 1024 addresses
are useless to hand over to end customers.

