Today four IPv4 address blocks (/8’s) were allocated by IANA. This leaves only seven blocks to be allocated to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). RIR policy states that when the central pool reaches five blocks, the remaining blocks will all be immediately allocated. This means that the final allocation is likely to be to APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Center) in January 2011. APNIC’s usual allocation is due in two weeks but will almost certainly be delayed until the New Year.

This means that IPv4 exhaustion will finally be reached in early 2011, just as was predicted. From then on everyone who requires IPv4 addresses will only be able to use exisiting stocks. RIRs have a stock of IPv4 addresses that will last for a number of months. Some ISPs also have stocks that will keep them going for several months.  If you are unfortunate enough to require IPv4 addresses and your local RIRs and ISPs have exausted their stock, then you will no longer be able to get any public IPv4 addresses.

Public IPv4 addresses are necessary to connect to the global Internet. Whilst large numbers of networks use “Intranet” addresses, internally these cannot be connected directly to the Internet,  so at some point public IPv4 addresses are essential. Furthermore, many applications and services must use public IPv4 addresses. This means that if you cannot get public IPv4 addresses for your organisation, you could face serious problems for your Internet connectivity and Internet services.

The long term solution is IPv6. IPv6 has almost limitless address space and is available in all modern operating systems and network equipment. There is no doubt that the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses will result in a rush to migrate to IPv6.

Erion Ltd

Erion Ltd is the world-leader in IPv6 training with the world’s most comprehensive portfolio of IPv6 training courses. Erion has also been providing IPv6 consultancy services for over twelve years. Erion is ready to help you learn about and implement IPv6.

Copyright Erion Ltd 2010, all rights reserved.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 1st, 2010 at 2:09 pm and is filed under IPv6, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.