ARIN Watch: 7 May 2014

Around 0.08 /8s were allocated by ARIN yesterday (6 May 2014), and by the looks of it the allocations bigger than /24 were as follows:

AT&T – /12
Sonic.net Inc – /16
Pennsylvania State University – /15
Altima Telecom Inc (Canada) – /20
ColoMX LLC – /20
Net3 Inc – /20
A2 Hosting, Inc – /21
Core Technology Services Inc – /21
Midcast – /21
Valve Corporation – /21
VegasNAP LLC – /21
Capco Reference Data Services – /22
Airespring Inc – /22
Black Lotus Communications – /22
Rack Alley LLC – /22
Ronin Capital LLC – /23

Quite a bumper day really.   I think it’s unlikely AT&T are going to get any more before exhaustion now.  Can we have more days like this please ARIN?

ARIN reaches final /8

In slightly unexpected news, ARIN reached their final /8 today supposedly because of the allocation of a /10 to Akamai, which reduced the space free from just over 1.25 /8s to 1 /8s exactly.  This means that ARIN are now in ‘Phase 4’, where all address allocation requests are closely scrutinised, and requests for /15 are above are closely scrutinised by a senior member of ARIN.

I haven’t seen the actual allocation figures yet, but this really should be the starting gun for Americans everywhere to start thinking about taking their heads out of the sand and rolling out IPv6.  It’s now going to be a lot harder to get allocations out of ARIN, and it can’t be long before total exhaustion is upon us.  Geoff Huston’s meter is probably going to be wound forward by months in the morning.

LACNIC crashes through the ‘final /8’ barrier in style

LACNIC crashed through the ‘final /8’ barrier in style yesterday by allocating a smashing 2,368,512 IPv4 addresses in just one day (0.141 /8s).  This brings the total left to around 0.87 /8s as of today, and this really does signficantly reduce the time needed to reach exhaustion (which in LACNIC’s case will be when they reach the final /10, or 0.25 /8s).

Most of the addresses allocated yesterday went to Brazil, the biggest block of 1,048,576 (/12) addresses going to Tim Celular S.A. in Brazil.  Other notable blocks include 2 x 262,144 addresses (/14)  and 6 x 131,072 (/15) going also to Tim Celular at the same time.  All the others are blocks of 1,024 and 2,048 (/22 and /21) so are relatively insignificant.

All blocks apart from two were allocated to Brazil, apart from one /22 which went to Colombia and another /22 went to Costa Rica.

It won’t take many more allocations like this to bring exhaustion very very close now.  Are there any other ISPs or mobile phone companies need more addresses in the near future, I wonder?

IPv4 depletion at LACNIC

As of today, LACNIC (the IP address registry for Latin America and the Caribbean) are down to 1.05 /8s remaining, which means that it is likely in the next day or two to have reached the final /8 that they have.  LACNIC have slightly different rules to some of the other registries – RIPE and APNIC, for example, considered their stock of IPv4 addresses to be exhausted when they reached the final /8 (16,777,216 addresses) , whereas ARIN are taking a different approach and are basically reserving hardly any, so it truly is a “race to the bottom” for that region although the requirements for obtaining a block when they reach the final /8 are much increased.  LACNIC consider their addresses to be exhausted when they reach 4,194,304 addresses (/10) left.

Yesterday there were 524,288 addresses (/13) allocated to Telemar Norte Leste S.A. in Brazil, and a further 393,216 addresses split as two blocks of 262,144 (/14) and 131,072 (/15) addresses to Telefonica de Argentina.  If this rate of allocation continues (i.e. 0.05 /8s per day), LACNIC will be out of addresses in 16 working days from now.  I suspect it won’t be depleted that quickly, but still a sobering thought, if you still have your head in the sand over IPv4 exhaustion and you’re located in the LACNIC region.

The End of Year IPv4 Report

So, here we are at the end of 2013 and let’s see where we are.  So far, APNIC and RIPE have ‘run out’, and the next two registries likely to be depleted in the next year or two are ARIN and LACNIC.  Until recently, it was likely that ARIN would run out first, and then ARIN and LACNIC were pretty much neck-and-neck for a while, but in recent months the demand for IPv4 in the LACNIC region has been accelerating quite a lot, and we’re now at the point (as of today) that LACNIC are now depleting their resources quite a bit faster than ARIN are.  Geoff Huston has the figures as of this morning at 1.5 /8s for ARIN and 1.3317 /8s for LACNIC, a difference of approximately 6 weeks.  If LACNIC continue this rate of depletion I suspect they will be down to the final /10 (as ARIN and LACNIC have different rules to RIPE, who reserved a whole /8) a fair bit sooner than the beginning of 2015.  As to why LACNIC has shown such a spurt in recent weeks, that’s anyone’s guess, but the next few months could be very interesting if current trends continue.  Just as well Comcast in the US is well on the way to rolling out IPv6 to 100% of their customer base then!

Happy new year!

Review: IPv4 “Significant Announcement” ceremony and press conference

So now we know what blocks of IPv4 look like.  They’re glass!  Today was the live webcast of the Numbering Resource Organisation‘s “Significant Announcement” ceremony from some hotel in Florida, USA.  Each of the Regional Internet Registries were awarded a commemorative glass block and some kind of large white certificate as they were each given their final /8 allocation of 16,777,216 IPv4 addresses.  Each award was followed by a speech, the quality of which (in my opinion at least) fared from ‘appalling’ to ‘not that good’.  This was followed by a press conference in which I understand the questions were not that great, and in some cases answered inaccurately.  So I’m expecting a whole raft of wrong news articles tomorrow.

Now we can say they are all gone.  They truly are.  You can check the official list – they really are all allocated!  Goodbye and thanks for all the fish…

Update: The actual ceremony and press conference are on YouTube now – announcement and press conference.

IPv4 Exhaustion: Could tomorrow be the big day?

The Internet has been buzzing over the past few days about what the exact date will be for IANA to ‘push the button’ and finally exhaust their stock of /8s by allocating two blocks to APNIC.  The rumours have been for quite some time that 31st Jan/1st Feb was going to be the big day, but now big big (and not very subtle) hints from several people who should know have been dropped, and also neatly coincides with NANOG 51, the perennial meeting of the North American Network Operators Group, and is also the day before Chinese New Year’s Eve.

So, watch this space!  NANOG 51 starts today, with the main events tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday.  I’m expecting an announcement around 09:30 EST (so 14:30 UK time, and around 00:30 in APNIC’s office in Brisbane) tomorrow.

Anyone for a party? :)

Clueless IPv6 Comment of the Day

Had to laugh (or possibly cry) at the following quote from reporter Claire Connelly of news.com.au, at http://www.news.com.au/technology/the-internet-has-run-out-of-ip-addresses-and-what-happens-after-that-is-anyones-guess/story-e6frfro0-1225995086627 today:

“Web developers have tried to compensate for this problem by creating IPv6 – a system which recognises six-digit IP addresses.”

The rest of it is so full of errors, I won’t even begin to start pointing them out – but it made me laugh anyway.  If this is the quality of reporting we’re going to get next week when the addresses *do* run out, I think we’re in for a bit of fun…

(In case you weren’t aware, IPv6 addresses aren’t six digits in length – they are 128-bit numbers, which is technically 32 hex digits in length, if all of the leading zeros are present.)

IPv4 Exhaustion News: Another bumper day at APNIC

At APNIC, it seems to have been another fantastic day of handing out loads of IPv4 addresses to the Chinese – today a /10 (or about 4 million addresses) was allocated to China Mobile bringing the total APNIC address pool down to 1.4 /8s, from 1.66 /8s at the weekend, a whopping 0.26 /8s decrease in one day.

There is still rampant speculation on when ‘IANA IPv4 exhaustion day’ will be,  since apparently it’s meant to be a secret – but my guess is still on 00:00 UTC+10 Tuesday 1 Feb (which is about 14:00 UK time Monday 31 Jan).  Can’t come soon enough for me…