Another milestone in the countdown to IPv4 exhaustion has been met. The Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Centre (LACNIC) has entered phase two of its IPv4 Exhaustion Plan. As of this writing the counter on LACNIC’s page shows 4,190,976 addresses remaining, or 25% of their last IANA /8 assignment.
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigned its last IPv4 /8 to LACNIC in May 2014 from the recovered address pool. As we wrote about in May 2014, this is it folks! Expect more announcements like these as the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) start exhausting those final allocations.
The practical implication to this is that organizations trying to acquire new IPv4 address blocks must provide additional justification for allocation. Any request for IPv4 allocations in the LACNIC region will involve a more rigorous review process. Once half of the roughly 4 million IPv4 addresses are allocated, LACNIC will enter the final phase three of its IPv4 Exhaustion Plan. During this final phase only new organizations will be able to receive new IPv4 address blocks, and then only once.
With this announcement, LACNIC is the first RIR to reach this low level of IPv4 exhaustion. The status of the other RIRs is:
- The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) entered phase two of its IPv4 exhaustion plan in 2012. According to their IPv4 Countdown page, ARIN currently has 94% of its last /8 available.
- The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) entered the final phase of its IPv4 exhaustion plan in 2011. In the final phase of its plan, each APNIC member can only receive a single /22 allocation.
- The RIPE NCC started allocating its last /8 in 2012. They are now down to 92% of this last /8 according to their available pool page.
- The African Network Information Center (AfriNIC) has not yet started allocating from its last /8.
The time to deploy IPv6 is now. Four of the five RIRs have now entered the final phases of their IPv4 exhaustion plans. If you are not yet planning for a transition to IPv6, you really need to get going now! If you want to grow your network, the simplest and easiest path will be to make the move to IPv6. Check out our “Start Here” pages to learn how you can get going!