You’ve probably never heard of 6::UK – and that’s pretty much the problem.  They were an organisation that started in 2010 and funded by the Government to the tune of £20,000 to help and assist UK organisations and companies to make the switch to IPv6.  Today, the entire board of 6::UK resigned because they say the Government is basically not backing them.

The hopeless state of IPv6 in the UK is not really something any of us should be proud of, and none of the Big 6 consumer ISPs have rolled it out yet.  There are a few smaller ISPs that have, but in the main the ISPs that control 90-something% of the consumer market just haven’t rolled it out.  My view is that no-one basically wants to make the first move on this, because whoever does, costs themselves money, and it’s the classic chicken-and-egg problem.

Perhaps a nice bit of public embarrassment will get things moving, but based on previous experience, I predict not.  And as the article points out, the British Government should be doing something towards this, especially as other governments around the world are.  Before it’s too late and it costs everyone three times as much to roll it out in a panic rather than do it now.

Update: The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills did bother to comment on this eventually, the text of which you can read on the BBC News article.  I’m not sure if it adds anything, though.

Today’s news is that yesterday ARIN went below 3 /8s left.  As their announcement shows, this means the RIR has now moved from Phase 1 to Phase 2, which has slightly different rules on allocation.    Block requests for /16 or larger are now going to be processed in strict order, and LIRs will have 60 days to pay up and not 90 (for IPv4 blocks only).  Also unused blocks are going to be put back into the pool earlier, after three months and not six.

Interesting news, and the squeeze is on.  Let’s see how it pans out…

You can always trust The Register to go for a sensationalist headline, so here goes…  The article at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/18/dwp_ipv4_addresses_unused/ gives us the headline that the UK Department of Work and Pensions are supposedly sitting on a gold mine after someone apparently discovered that DWP has a /8 block of IPv4 which it is not advertising to the Internet (This story is orignally based on this blog post) .  Outrage followed, and the comments sections of several web sites were bunged up with demands for .gov.uk to return the block immediately to RIPE sell it for £millions and renumber it to 10.0.0.0/8 addresses.

There’s a few problems with this.  First, this is the British Government we’re talking about.  Even if they could sell the block, it would probably cost them more to renumber it than the profit they’d supposedly make from doing so.  Secondly, they’re entitled to have this block of addresses (which predate the ARIN/RIPE/APNIC/AfriNIC/LACNIC system – they were allocated by IANA as an “early registration”) and they are also entited not to advertise them, if they so choose.  There’s nothing that I know of in the rules that states they must advertise them. Thirdly, I don’t even think they can sell the block under RIPE NCC rules anyway, and even if they did return the block, it wouldn’t actually help because I believe RIPE have stated that any returned blocks would be allocated under the “final /8” rules anyway.  Fourthly, as someone amusingly pointed out in this mailing list posting, no-one’s complained at all about 25.0.0.0/8 which is another .gov.uk block, allocated to the Ministry of Defence.  And of course, finally, finding another /8 down the back of the sofa as it were would only delay IPv4 exhaustion by another month or so anyway.

And then just when you thought it had all blown over, we then see a tweet from the Cambridge MP Julian Huppert informing us that he’s tabled a question (which, who knows, might get asked at the next Prime Minister’s Question Time) about what is going on with 51.0.0.0/8.  Probably the first time IPv4 has ever been mentioned in Parliament.  And in the same tweet, he helpfully provides a link to an ePetition calling for the Government to sell the block! I won’t be signing that!

Whatever next?  I need a lie down …

And what a week it’s been!  As I posted yesterday, RIPE ran out of IPv4 addresses above the final /8 (for which special rules apply), effectively exhausting the supply in Europe.  I was predicting Tuesday of next week, personally, so all said and done, a nice way to end the week.

RIPE tweeted a link to the photo of the moment that the button was pressed – you can find the tweet here and the actual photo here

Even the Huston-o-Meter has been updated out-of-sequence yesterday, so he now accurately records the actual exhaustion date.  Still not sure why as of today his figure stands at 1.04 or so though, or even why the RIPE graph is still claiming 17.30 million addresses (1.0.3 /8s) – what’s the extra 0.03 /8s for?

So, the bit you’re all asking, who got the final blocks?  Well, a whopping 109 allocations were made yesterday.  Sifting through the data, the largest block allocated was to H3G S.p.A. of Italy which was a /14.  There was a /15 allocated to EWE TEL GmbH of Germany, and /16s allocated to Jump Internet Services SRL of Romania and Swisscom (Schweiz) AG of Switzerland.  /17s were allocated to Inspiring Networks B.V. i.o. of the Netherlands and Jump Internet Services SRL of Romania.  /18s went to YANDEX LLC of Russia, MSP Format Ltd of Ukraine, Host Europe GmbH of Germany, and Jump Internet Services SRL of Romania.

I won’t list everything else under that as it would take ages, but it seems that poor old Jump at least were given split blocks.  There were also 43 separate allocations, some as small as /29, to LIRs in Cyprus.

And so that’s it, that’s the end!  All I wish now is that all the ISPs in the UK (and probably plenty of other countries too) that haven’t moved to offering IPv6 to end users already (and that’s most of them) would actually take their head out the sand and do something about it!  (Believe it or not, even Virgin Media has a /24 of IPv6 allocated which they’re not currently allocating any of to their retail customers yet…)

And don’t forget the obligatory singing of the now-famous song of course.  Now, where’s my deckchair and popcorn … ?

RIPE NCC have just posted the following news to their mailing list:
http://lists.ripe.net/pipermail/ncc-announce/2012-September/000615.html

This means that there are no more IPv4 addresses left available for allocation in the RIPE region, except for the last /8, which is covered by the special rules – which are basically “no, you can’t have any more” :)

A relatively disappointing day yesterday compared to the previous two – in terms of large blocks, just a /16 allocated to Kyivstar of Ukraine.  On the plus side, the Huston-o-Meter‘s predictions are indicating just one week left!  Roll on next week!

Update: I rather liked the tweet from RIPE NCC yesterday – https://twitter.com/RIPE_NCC/status/246204688104579072 – with only somewhere between a /11 and a /12 available at the time of writing, if even RIPE are wondering if people are taking bets we must be pretty close to the end now!

So, there were a couple of large blocks allocated by RIPE yesterday – Etisalat (Saudi Arabia) had a /14, and an ISP in Germany had a /15.  That’s another day of allocating 0.03 /8s in a day – we have days to go now if this continues, not weeks.  The Huston-o-Meter is predicting 21 September as of today, but I’m not sure it’ll be that long if the allocation rate continues at the same pace.

A short report today, but amongst other smaller allocations yesterday, 256K addresses were allocated to Tele2 Sverige AB in Sweden, which brings us down another 0.03 /8s or so.  If the allocation rates continue at that pace we might well be out by the beginning of next week …

It’s been an interesting week in the world of IPv4.  Still plenty of people trying to tell you that there’s no problem and no-one’s running out, but a couple of significant things have happened this week which are worth noting.

Firstly, RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry for Europe made an official announcement last Tuesday (4 September) that they were down to their last /10 above the final /8, which is 0.25 of a /8 or 4,194,304 addresses.  When this happens, RIPE move to ‘Phase 1’, which means that their allocation people work in pairs and scrutinise things much more closely.  In addition, things are processed very strictly in order and they will only communicate with you when your ticket is in the front of the queue.  RIPE have also made their official graph update daily now, which you can find at http://www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/ipv4-exhaustion/ipv4-available-pool-graph

The second thing to happen this week has come from a rather unusual place – Iran.  Two different ISPs (who may or may not be government owned/controlled, I don’t know), asked for two blocks of addresses, one a /12 and another a /13 – a total of 1,572,864 in just one week.  The sensation caused the “Huston-o-Meter” (at http://ipv4.potaroo.net) to jump from 4 October to 27 September and now stands, at the time of writing, at 22 September.  If any more large allocations occur between now and then, we could be looking at a run-out date of less than 2 weeks time!

Good time to keep your head in the sand, isn’t it?

So as I write, today is 29 June 2012.  As of yesterday, 29 July 2012 was Geoff Huston’s prediction for RIPE to get down to the final /8 (although I notice it’s now at 28 July), at which point the supply of IPv4 addresses to Europe and the surrounding region effectively dry up, along with the APNIC region which “exhausted” last year.

The “head-in-sand” mentality still appears to be quite prevalent still, and I’m not sure that’s going to change until the day actually happens.  Here’s hoping it’ll come soon …