Early this morning, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) announced that it had been allocated two /8 address blocks from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA ). Those two blocks, 39/8 and 106/8, were the last unallocated blocks in the IANA free pool of IPv4 address available to Regional Internet Registries (RIR). With the allocation, the final days of IPv4 have moved closer as the number of available addresses that can be allocated will dwindle.
“Please be aware, this will be the final allocation made by IANA under the current framework and will trigger the final distribution of five /8 blocks, one to each RIR under the agreed global policy for the allocation of the remaining IPv4 address space,” APNIC wrote on its website.
From the Enterprising Networking Planet article:
Last of the IPv4 Addresses Allocated
By Sean Michael Kerner February 1, 2011
IANA has scheduled a press conference for Thursday morning to discuss the final allocation of the last five blocks of IPv4 space. The policy of distributing the final five equally among the RIRs is a long standing policy designed for the endgame of IPv4.
While the IANA free pool is now gone, that doesn’t mean that IPv4 address space itself has been exhausted. The RIRs make requests from IANA for free, …
APNIC expects to continue to make normal allocations of IPv4 address space to its constituents for the next three to six months. After that,….
In the U.S., the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is the RIR responsible for address allocation. John Curran, CEO of ARIN, …
“We have no official forecast, and any estimate would change rapidly depending on requests received,” …
More impetus for the IPv6 migration
With freely available, unallocated IPv4 addresses almost gone, the move to the next generation IPv6 addressing system which provides significantly more address space than IPv4 must begin in earnest….
To date, IPv6 adoption has been slow, though the RIRs have been advocating for its adoption.
“The RIRs have been working with network operators at the local, regional, and global level for more than a decade …
Pawlik added that the transition to IPv6 from IPv4 represents an opportunity for even more innovative applications …
Though IPv4 is now nearly exhausted, the move to IPv4 will take time. The Internet Society has scheduled World IPv6 day for June ….
“Internet users need to realize that the Internet will be in transition over several years, with both IPv4 and IPv6 running in parallel,…
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.