IPv4 Markets

IPv6: Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

The theory put forward by the IETF was simple enough... while there were still enough IPv4 addresses, use transition technologies to migrate to dual stack and then wean IPv4 off over time. All nice and tidy. The way engineers, myself included, liked it. However those controlling the purse strings had a different idea. more

Is it Finally Time to Eliminate Needs-Based IPv4 Transfer Policies?

Two weeks before depletion of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) IPv4 free pool in September 2015, we published an article recommending that the ARIN community adopt transfer policies that encourage trading transparency and improve whois registry accuracy. By eliminating needs justification as a pre-condition to updating the registry, we argued that ARIN could eliminate existing policy-based barriers that have kept many otherwise lawful and legitimate commercial transactions in the shadows. more

The Hidden Value of IPv4 Addresses

All devices that connect to the internet need unique addresses. The number of IP addresses is limited, creating a demand for addresses worldwide, particularly from the cloud computing industry. This demand has raised the value of IPv4 to levels that the internet's original developers didn't predict, in part because the internet was considered an experiment at the time. Of course, use - and so demand -- has exceeded anyone's realistic expectations. more

Internet Governance for Sustainability

Sustainability is a difficult term to avoid these days. With that in mind, it's somewhat surprising that last week's European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG), now in its tenth year, featured one of its first workshops looking at the subject. But while the workshop focused on issues of energy usage and e-waste, the concept of sustainability raises some much broader and likely difficult questions for the Internet governance community. more

How Many IPv4 Addresses Does the RIPE NCC Have Left?

Since IANA ran out of IPv4 addresses, people are increasingly aware of how short the remaining lifetime of IPv4 is. With World IPv6 Day taking place this week, the issue has come into even sharper focus. Since March 2011, the RIPE NCC has been publishing the size of its pool of available IPv4 addresses. All five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) regularly publish the status of their IPv4 address pools. In the image below, you can see how the number of IPv4 addresses in the RIPE NCC pool changes over time. more

Addressing 2010

It's January again, and being the start of another year, it's as good a time as any to look at the last 12 months and see what the Internet was up to in 2010. This is an update to the report prepared 12 months ago when looking at 2009, so lets see what has changed in the past 12 months in addressing the Internet, and look at how address allocation information can inform us of the changing nature of the network itself. more

1,000th /22 Allocated from Last /8

On 14 September 2012, the RIPE NCC began allocating IPv4 address space from the last /8 we received from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Nobody was entirely sure what would happen when we reached this point. Would there be a "run on the bank" for this final block of addresses? more

IPv4: Business As Usual

This year, we expect that the RIPE NCC's pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses will reach the "last /8", meaning that we have 16,777,216 IPv4 addresses left in the available pool. At that point it will no longer be possible for RIPE NCC members to obtain the amount of IPv4 addresses they will require to expand their current and future networks. When we hit the last /8, the RIPE NCC will only be able to distribute IPv6 addresses and a one-off allocation of IPv4 address space... Has this caused a last minute rush? more

What Digital Divide on IP Addresses?

I took an instant dislike to The Digital Divide on IP Addresses post for some reason, well for many reasons actually. First and foremost is that the implication that the "digital divide" is somehow caused by IP address allocation policies. While it is certainly true that there are "digital divides" between developed and developing parts of the world, the historical imbalance in IP addressing is not one of them. The fact is that while we will "run out" of IPv4 addresses at some point in the not too distant future, there are an unimaginably large number of IPv6 addresses available. more

APNIC Labs Partners with Cloudflare for Joint DNS Research Project

APNIC Labs, the research arm of Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre, is partnering with Cloudflare for a joint research project relating to the operation of the DNS, reports Geoff Huston, APNIC's Chief Scientist. more

Psst - Interested in Some Lightly-Used IP Addresses?

The Internet Service Provider (ISP) community is carefully watching the impending depletion of the unassigned IPv4 address pool. Most estimates place the depletion of the central pool of unassigned IPv4 addresses by mid-2011. After that, each Regional Internet Registry (RIR) will continue to satisfy requests for additional IPv4 space for a limited time (depending on the rate of incoming requests and the amount of address space on hand in the RIR at the time of central pool depletion). more

Declaring IPv6 an Internet Standard

I've already shared my thoughts following a session of the IPv4 Sunset Working Group at IETF 95 that considered whether to declare IPv4 an "Historic" specification. Of course, as one would expect for a meeting of a Standards Development Organization (SDO), that wasn't the only standards process discussion through the week. Another session, this time in the IPv6 Maintenance Working Group, considered the related topic of whether to make the IPv6 specification a full Internet Standard. Let's look at that proposal. more

Cloud Security Hinges on IP Addressing

In the first part of this trilogy, I discussed the importance of automatically provisioned second generation DNS in connection with Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC). In the second post, I talked about IP addressing, private enterprise networks, and how DHCP does not meet the requirements of multitenant Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud environments. I will now wrap up this trilogy by putting these two thesis into real-life context. more

IPv6 Answers to Common Questions from Policy Makers, Executives and Other Non-Technical Readers

A factual paper prepared in October 2009 for and endorsed by the Chief Executive Officers of ICANN and all the Regional Internet Registries that provides answers to commonly asked questions about IPv6 such as: How are allocations made, and to whom? How are IPv6 addresses actually being allocated? And why did such large IPv4 address allocations go to US organizations, including the US Government, and its Department of Defense? more

World IPv6 Launch: Now What?

World IPv6 Launch kicked off 6 June 2012 at 00:00 UTC. On this day, multitudes of website operators, network operators and home router vendors from all over the world have joined thousands of companies and millions of websites in permanently enabling the next generation Internet. They have done this by turning IPv6 support on by default in (at least some of) their products and services. This is a major milestone in the history of the Internet. more