The last two available /8 blocks of IPv4 addresses have been allocated by IANA to APNIC. This takes the remaining total down to 5 which means the IPv4 address pool is effectively exhausted. The last 5 are spoken for. There are no more. That’s it :).
I’m holding off crying “history, history” until the remaining 5 are allocated. This was, I’m told, originally planned for a ceremonial handover at the ICANN meeting in San Fransisco in March but will now happen much sooner than that. Keep reading this blog for updates.
I’ve written plenty about this so if you need to understand more do a search for IPv6. It is worth noting that this isn’t the total exhaustion of all IPv4 addresses. That will happen in dribs and drabs as people use up those held by Regional Internet Registries (RIRs – expected to be streched out in ever decreasing block sizes) and then use up their own.
You need an IPv6 strategy. For a quick overview on how it might affect you read this.
5 replies on “Last 2 IPv4 blocks allocated – STOP PRESS”
It looks like the meeting on 3rd February may announce the final allocation, at least that’s the whispers from the interwebz. But you know, not one of the big ISPs wanted to give us a comment on this news. I wonder why..
Some of the “big ISPs”, Virgin for example, have openly stated that they do not have near term support for IPv4. The biggest problem for them (all network issues aside) is that they need to have CPE support. There is currently no low cost router that supports IPv6. They are just starting to come out of the woodwork. Cisco does provide IPv6 support but a Cisco router would be too expensive to ship to a consumer customer base. It is completely different if you are shipping to businesses that might be electing to use a Cisco router in anycase.
Links of interest :
Wikipedia article on third-party upgrade software for IPv6 support –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD-WRT
“The Open Source WRT54G Story” (8 Nov.’05) –
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3562391/The-Open-Source-WRT54G-Story.htm
A nearly five (5) year old how-to –
http://michaelgracie.com/2006/02/06/ipv6-in-the-house-was-no-big-deal/
And last, a website on router hacking for wizards – http://openwrt.org/
@ tref – In your comment’s second line – s/IPv4/IPv6/ ?
“Vint Cerf, ‘Father’ of Internet, Weighs In on IPv4 Exhaustion” (PCMag.com, 2 Feb.’11) :
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2379119,00.asp