APNIC meeting to discuss divvying up diminishing IPv4 addresses

Stuart Corner
Monday, 04 August 2008 04:19

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The Asia Pacific Internet community will descend on Christchurch - New Zealand for the APNIC 26 meeting in August, and deciding how to parcel out the rapidly diminishing pool of IPv4 addresses will be high on the agenda.

The meeting is sponsored by InternetNZ (the Internet Society of New Zealand) and the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) and will be held from 25 to 29 August 2008.

InternetNZ executive director Keith Davidson, said: "The meeting is very timely considering the increasing recognition that IPv6 deployment will be a business-critical issue for network operators in the next two years. Some projections have IPv4 exhaustion within as little as two years. Discussions on how to manage the remaining unallocated IPv4 address space will be prominent on the agenda, as will planning on how the community can facilitate the migration of the world's networks to IPv6 technology."A policy development and discussion program tackling the growing challenge of managing the remaining unallocated pool of IPv4 addresses will be a key component of the meeting's programme.

The OECD recently warned of the impending shortage of IPv4 addresses predicting crunch time as early as 2011. It called on governments and business to "work together more effectively and urgently to meet the growing demand for Internet addresses and secure the future of the Internet economy."

The five-day event also includes hands-on training specific to Internet resource management and IPv6 deployment and a seminar program where international speakers discuss the latest technical developments from across the globe. Details and registration here.

iTWire contributor Tony Austin has created on online IPv4 address depletion counter. As at 04 August 2008, it showed the estimated exhaustion date 896 days hence.