Internet address run-out: is it time to panic?

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 01 September 2009 06:23

IT Industry - Strategy

The latest predictions on IPv4 address run-out have brought forward the estimated exhaustion date, especially in the Asia Pacific region; Internet elder statesman Vint Cerf has warned of 'panic' solutions resulting in poor engineering; and the Australian Government Information Management Office has accelerated its IPv6 adoption timetable by three years.

Australian IPv6 consultancy and training organisation, IPv6 Now has published the second edition of its occasional newsletter on IPv6 issues, 'The Standard ' and it makes for depressing reading.

According to IPv6 Now communications manager, Kate Lance, most of the IPv4 depletion counters that can be found on various web sites are ticking down towards a IPv4 address run-out date of 22 July 2011, and arrive at this date using mathematical modelling by Australian Internet expert Geoff Huston, but another researcher Stephan Lagerholm, has come up with a date six months earlier, of 10 January 2011.

Lance explains that the IPv4 address space is divided into 256 blocks each of which represents the approximately 16.8 million addresses that share the same first eight bits, a total of about 4.3 billion addresses. Of these 256 blocks only 27 remain unallocated The allocation rate is now about one block every five to seven weeks and accelerating.

The zero address date estimated by Huston at 22 July 2011 and by Lagerholm at 10 January 20011 is the date at which only five of these 27 blocks remain.

When that happens ICANN has said that each of the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) - RIPE NCC (Europe), ARIN (North America), APNIC (Asia Pacific), AfriNIC (Africa), and LACNIC (Latin America and the Caribbean) - will get one block. Beyond that, according to Lance, "when the five RIRs have burned through all of their remaining holdings – around March to May 2012 – that's it for unallocated addresses."


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