2017-01-05

IPv4 address space exhaustion in Internet Registries

The dramatic development of the Internet industry had led to the depletion of the remaining IPv4 address space available to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). Reserved IPv4 address blocks in IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) ran out on February 3, 2011. And the free pool of IPv4 addresses held by APNIC which is RIR in the Asia Pacific region ran out on April 15, 2011. In addition, the free pool of IPv4 addresses ran out in RIPE NCC (September 14, 2012), LACNIC(June 10, 2014) and ARIN(September 24, 2015).

This does not mean we will not be able to use the existing IPv4 Internet after the address pool runs out, but there are no more unallocated IPv4 addresses available from the Regional Internet Registries.

However, when we think about Internet development and expansion from mid-and long-term perspectives, IPv4 address space exhaustion will create a great restriction on the Internet, and will inevitably raise serious problems as time progresses.

Therefore, JPNIC is proactively working on the IPv4 address space exhaustion issue to minimize the problems.

Activities of JPNIC

Announcements	2007-06-19	About IPv4 address exhaustion in Internet Registries (In Japanese)
Reports	2007-12-07	Study Report on the IPv4 Address Space Exhaustion Issue (Phase I)
	2006-07-31	Report on "Analysis and Recommendations on the Exhaustion of IPv4 Address Space"
Policy Proposal	2007-09-06 (APNIC 24)	Countdown Policy Proposal(Revised)
	2007-03-01 (APNIC 23)	IPv4 countdown policy proposal

Contact

E-mail: ipv4exh-comment@nic.ad.jp