Remaining IPv4 Address Space Drops Below 5%

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Amsterdam, 18 October 2010 ? The Number Resource Organization (NRO) announced today that less than five percent of the world?s IPv4 addresses remain unallocated. APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific region, has been assigned two blocks of IPv4 addresses by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). This latest allocation means that the IPv4 free pool dipped below 10% in January, just nine months ago. Since then, over 200 million IPv4 addresses have been allocated from IANA to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).

?This is a major milestone in the life of the Internet, and means that allocation of the last blocks of IPv4 to the RIRs is imminent,? states Axel Pawlik, Chairman of the Number Resource Organization (NRO), the official representative of the five RIRs. ?It is critical that all Internet stakeholders take definitive action now to ensure the timely adoption of IPv6.?

IPv6 is the ?next generation? of the Internet Protocol, providing a hugely expanded address space, which will allow the Internet to grow into the future. In 2010, the five RIRs are expected to allocate over 2,000 IPv6 address blocks, representing an increase of over 70% on the number of IPv6 allocations in 2009. In contrast, the number of IPv4 allocations is expected to grow by only 8% in 2010. These statistics indicate an absence of any last minute ?rush? on IPv4 addresses, and a strong momentum behind the adoption of IPv6.

?The allocation of Internet number resources by the five RIRs enables every region in the world to benefit from fair and equitable distribution of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. We are also actively collaborating with stakeholders at the local, regional, and global level to offer training and advice to public and private sector organisations on IPv6 adoption to ensure that everyone is prepared for IPv4 depletion and IPv6 deployment,? added Pawlik.

The IANA assigns IPv4 addresses to the RIRs in blocks that equate to 1/256th of the entire IPv4 address space (each block is referred to as a ?/8? or ?slash-8?). The most recent assignment means that there are now only 12 of these blocks available, which is less than five percent of the entire IPv4 address pool.

The final five blocks of IPv4 addresses will be distributed simultaneously to the five RIRs, leaving only seven blocks to be handed out under the normal distribution method.

According to current depletion rates, the last five IPv4 address blocks will be allocated to the RIRs in early 2011. The pressure to adopt IPv6 is mounting. Many worry that without adequate preparation and action, there will be a chaotic scramble for IPv6, which could increase Internet costs and threaten the stability and security of the global network.

Source: the Number Resource Organisation

[WelshBluebird]

Having not paid too much attention to this, is there any reason why the takeup of IPv6 is so slow?

Even Windows XP SP1 supported IPv6, so we are talking at least 8 years now, if not longer.

[Japlabot]

Yes it is silly that ISPs and IHVs are so slow on the IPv6 rollout. Soon some consumers will be stuck with IPv6-only, their connections to IPv4-only websites won't work, and it will take 6-12months for the major IPv4-only websites to upgrade only after the fact that their customers start complaining that they can't access their website.

Really they should just stop dishing out IPv4 addresses now cold-turkey and force the ISPs and IHVs to upgrade.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Yes it is silly that ISPs and IHVs are so slow on the IPv6 rollout. Soon some consumers will be stuck with IPv6-only, their connections to IPv4-only websites won't work, and it will take 6-12months for the major IPv4-only websites to upgrade only after the fact that their customers start complaining that they can't access their website.

Really they should just stop dishing out IPv4 addresses now cold-turkey and force the ISPs and IHVs to upgrade.

Well it's not like new customers won't be able to access IPv4 addresses, ISPs will just use NAT. Not that it's a good solution to the problem...

[Angel Blue01]

Consumers don't even know of the problem, much less want to buy new IPv6 hardware :(

[WelshBluebird]

Consumers don't even know of the problem, much less want to buy new IPv6 hardware

But most consumers don't buy their hardware anyway.

At least in the UK, most of the routers that people have are the free ones given by ISP's. Very few people I know actually have bought their own modem or router.

[Haptic]

Well if you get a modem from Comcast, you pay a monthly fee for it...

[x-byte]

Consumers don't even know of the problem, much less want to buy new IPv6 hardware :(

This is mostly not a consumer problem. The ISP can work around the issue for their customers, like they did with NAT.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Timer.

Bear in mind that the timer is only an estimation though.

[WelshBluebird]

Well if you get a modem from Comcast, you pay a monthly fee for it...

Serious? Talk about a rip off.

Nearly all ISP's over here give you the kit for free.

[Chasethebase Veteran]

So with IPv6, what happens, do you need a router that supports IPv6 to continue using the internet in the future? Also what about websites, are they unaffected? Same with internet connected mobiles, will they be able to support IPv6?

[x-byte]

So with IPv6, what happens, do you need a router that supports IPv6 to continue using the internet in the future? Also what about websites, are they unaffected? Same with internet connected mobiles, will they be able to support IPv6?

Depends on the ISP. Some ISP's already offer IPv6.

[Ci7]

hmmmm

does NeoWin support IPv6 ?

people would be locked out pretty soon once ipv4 reach depletion , some people won't be able to get ipv4 anymore

----

Projected IANA Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 07-Jun-2011

Projected RIR Unallocated Address Pool Exhaustion: 29-Jan-2012

[SoLoR1]

Runing dual stack network for about a year... IPv6 traffic is less then 1% of total traffic count and Win7 preferes IPv6 protocol over IPv4 (in case pages/services im visiting are accessible over both IPv4 & IPv6), so yes its really poor adobtation rate of IPv6 protocol. For example not even major pages companys are not accessible over IPv6, like MS, Google, Youtube, Facebook... However everything from google and facebook is accessible over ipv6 on seperate addresses (for ex. ipv6.google.com and www.v6.facebook.com) and if ISP wants, they can get in to some DNS google program that adds AAAA records to "main" pages for google services, but ISP like this here in Slovenia is _one_ and even that one is not comercal type but it is for non comerical usage (like education, govermants etc). Currently more or less only traffic im having over IPv6 are gentoo linux update servers (lots of them are dual stacked) and some odd torrent peer...

edit: and no neowin does not support ipv6...

[Ci7]

in my case we are still stuck with ipv4

our ISPs are certainly sluggish

they talked about LTE deployment by about this time , but nope nothing!

oh well , LTE require ipv6 anyway!