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
Here is a list of the most viewed news and blog postings that were featured on CircleID in 2007. Best wishes for 2008. more
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
The 7th African Peering and Interconnection Forum (AfPIF) took place in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from 30 August - 1 September 2016. AfPIF is the annual conference organised by the Internet Society to specifically address interconnection challenges together with the wide-ranging opportunities the African continent offers. Tanzania is well-known for its safari, Mount Kilimanjaro and beautiful Zanzibar beaches, but not only that... more
Anyone seeking to honor a groundbreaking contribution toward a better online world should submit a nomination for the 2014 M3AAWG J. D. Falk Award. Presented to people whose work on specific projects made the Internet a safer, more collaborative, more inclusive place, the J. D. Falk Award has recognized leaders and pioneers who saw elements of the online experience that needed improvement and took action to fix them. more
As I've been getting ready to catch my plane for ICANN 35 (Sydney), I can't help but thinking that there are a lot of things going down these days that will dramatically affect makeup of the Internet for years to come. Next year at this time, the root could be a very, very different place. A few of the items that will be getting deconstructed, discussed, debated Down Under are outlined below... more
There are many network operator group meetings being held these days. Even in the backwater of the South Pacific where I live there is now AUSNOG, and NZNOG is just next door in New Zealand. We now have MENOG in the Middle East and AFNOG in Africa. The original NOG was the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), and they have the T-Shirts to prove it! NANOG meets three times a year, and I attended NANOG 41 in October 2007. NANOG meetings cover a broad variety of topics, from operational tools, measurement, and peering practices through to a commentary on the state of the Internet industry. Here are my impressions of the meeting. more
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
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
Like many in the UK communications industry my colleagues and I at Entanet have been eagerly awaiting the Digital Britain report. Darren Farnden, Entanet's Head of Marketing, has posted an interesting assessment of key parts of the report at opinion.enta.net. Given the content of Darren's article I thought it would be useful to post it in full here for CircleID readers... more
As the first semester of 2010 comes to a close, the IPv4 address pool has dropped to 6%. Another year and we will probably celebrate (mourn?) the end of the IANA IPv4 pool. As Vint Cerf commented on the topic of depletion in an e-mail to Bob Hinden: 'Sic transit Gloria Mundi'. The view of an abyss or the fear of judgment day always focuses attention and as a result IPv6 adoption is finally picking up speed. The Google invitational IPv6 Conference in Mountain View clearly illustrated the point. more
In connection with the recent publication of the IANA RFP, there have been some commenters that have proclaimed that removing the requirement of the Contractor to document the consensus of relevant stakeholders in connection with the delegation of new gTLDs from the original draft Statement of Work as a win for ICANN. However, when reading the recently revised IANA RFP language in light of the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) Dakar Communiqué, a rather compelling legal case can be made... more
It's fascinating to watch the Internet technical community grapple with policy economics as they face the problems creating by the growing scarcity of IPv4 addresses. The Internet Governance Project (IGP) is analyzing the innovative policies that ARIN, RIPE and APNIC are considering as a response to the depletion of IPv4 addresses. more
The internet bus continues to accelerate straight into the IPv4 address depletion wall with spirited discussions continuing on how to divvy up the remnants of the address space. Obviously all five Regional Internet Registries (RIR's) want to make sure they get their fair share from IANA but what is a fair share remains the subject of interpretation. In the mean time, scenarios of a speculative land rush and auctions of ever smaller address blocks abound with unattractive consequences such as an explosion of the size of the routing table and a stunted growth of the global internet economy... In the meantime, the airline industry completed a rather significant migration of their own... more
Developments in the Caribbean digital space are fuelling initiatives to strengthen the Internet infrastructure in the region. In Guadeloupe, a recent agreement among three Internet service providers has cleared the way for the island to establish its first Internet exchange point. Commonly called an IX or an IXP, an Internet exchange point is a critical element of Internet infrastructure used to interconnect networks and deliver data traffic between them. more