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America Runs Out of IPv4 Internet Addresses

FireFury03 writes: The BBC is reporting that the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) ran out of spare IP addresses yesterday. "Companies in North America should now accelerate their move to the latest version of the net's addressing system. Now Africa is the only region with any significant blocks of the older version 4 internet addresses available." A British networking company that supplies schools has done an analysis on how concerned IT managers should be. This comes almost exactly 3 years after Europe ran out.

8 of 435 comments (clear)

  1. Three years after Europe ran out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, that's just an artifact of the different policies for assigning the last addresses. RIPE (the European registry) throttled assignments by making the requirements much more strict. That change of policy was considered the point when RIPE ran out of IPv4 addresses, because the remaining addresses are not given out just for asking. Unlike the other registries, ARIN did not institute a policy to extend the availability of IPv4 addresses for transitioning purposes, so they burned through the last 16 million addresses like no tomorrow and are now truly out of IPv4 addresses to assign. They are in fact the first registry without IPv4 addresses in stock. RIPE still has almost a full /8, APNIC has two thirds of an /8, LACNIC has one seventh of an /8, and AFRINIC still has 2.3 /8 blocks.

    1. Re:Three years after Europe ran out? by FireFury03 · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, that's just an artifact of the different policies for assigning the last addresses. RIPE (the European registry) throttled assignments by making the requirements much more strict. That change of policy was considered the point when RIPE ran out of IPv4 addresses, because the remaining addresses are not given out just for asking. Unlike the other registries, ARIN did not institute a policy to extend the availability of IPv4 addresses for transitioning purposes, so they burned through the last 16 million addresses like no tomorrow and are now truly out of IPv4 addresses to assign. They are in fact the first registry without IPv4 addresses in stock. RIPE still has almost a full /8, APNIC has two thirds of an /8, LACNIC has one seventh of an /8, and AFRINIC still has 2.3 /8 blocks.

      Well, not really... RIPE, APNIC and APNIC reserved the last /8 for "IPv6 transition" (i.e. an extremely restrictive allocation policy). ARIN reserved the last /10 for the same purpose. So 3 years ago, RIPE hit the last /8, now ARIN have hit the last /10. They all still have addresses to hand out, but in all cases (except Afrinic) the allocation policies are now so restrictive that for practical purposes you can consider them "out".

  2. Ipv6 adoption isn't that bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to google's ipv6 stats, about 21% of its American visitors access the site via ipv6.
    https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html#tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption&tab=per-country-ipv6-adoption

    That is not as high as Belgium (almost 36%), but it is a start.

  3. Re:Move to the latest version? by Dagger2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Copy/paste them. Or use DNS, it's hardly a new technology.

    And if you really can't do either, then pick your addresses better. If you pick addresses like 2001:db8:42:a57e:a92f:2c3d:30c5:7562 rather than 2001:db8:42:1::2 and refuse to use DNS for them, then you can't complain about how hard they are to remember.

  4. Re:Again? by Dagger2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, not again.

    Last year, ARIN hit one /8 left (that's the second article you linked). Back in July of this year, ARIN had to make their first ever refusal for an allocation on the basis of not having the IP space for it (that's the first article). They still had some space remaining for small allocations. Now, as of yesterday, they have to refuse all allocations on that basis, because they ran out of space altogether. That's this article.

    Apparently, the idea that reaching 0% involves going through 10% and 1% first is hard to grasp...

  5. Re:America! F-Yeah! by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 4, Informative

    Out of IP addresses? Sounds like a good time to invade somewhere where they mine them!

    If you want to invade somewhere with a crap ton of IPv4 address how about the DOD? They have an entire class A. They have more address than a number of continents.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Or how about big businesses?

    IBM 9.0.0.0/8
    General electric 3.0.0.08
    HP 15.0.0.0/8 AND 16.0.0.0/8
    Apple 17.0.0.0/8
    Ford 19.0.0.0/8
    Haliburton 34.0.0.0/8
    Hell the the US postal system owns 56.0.0.08

    There are far more than enough IPv4 address to last us several more years they are just sitting in the hands of people that don't use them appropriately.
    I am not saying that we should stick with IPv4, we need IPv6 in the long run it just should not be as urgent as it is becoming.
    What IANA should do is revoke their ownership of those addresses and give them 6 months or so to restructure their internal networks before assigning there addresses to the rest of the planet.

    --
    ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
  6. Re:America! F-Yeah! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    New England Universities are hogging on multiple Class A subnets (One Class A subnet is ~16 million IP addresses, as compared to 2.3 million left with Africa). Better to 'invade' them and give freedom to millions of unused IPs

  7. Re:America! F-Yeah! by grahamsz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Like who? MIT Is the only school i see that still has a class A

    The most obvious people who should be giving them up are

    a) HP - who have TWO class As and I believe around 7 employees.
    b) Apple - have a class A and as far as I know don't run any significant external networking.
    c) IBM - kinda like apple. they did have a networking business at one point but I believe that's sold to AT&T now
    d) Halibutron - just why?
    e) Prudential Insurance - wtf? in what possible world do they need 16 million external addresses?