Technology: Internet Addresses Running on Low

A serious pinch to the every expanding internet is expected to hit this summer.  The supply of Internet Protocol addresses has been dwindling and will totally dry up this summer.  An IP address is a short series of numbers with three dots between them, like 222.66.82.123.   The problem is that all possible 4.3 billion IPV4 addresses are about to be totally allocated.  Asia has been without new addresses since 2011 and North America is expected to begin running short this summer.

Once the bank of unused IPV4 addresses runs out, those requesting new IP addresses in North America will be turned away from ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, because there simply are no more IPV4 addresses.

Richard Jimmerson, ARIN’s CIO, who currently oversees ARIN’s registration services, told Ars Technica that “In the coming weeks, for the first time in history, an organization will come in and request IPv4 address space and qualify, but we won’t have it in our inventory to fulfill the request.  We’ve been in phase four of the countdown plan for a year now. Currently, all requests are evaluated by two team members on a first-in, first-out basis. Soon there may be two organizations that have requested /11s. One will be approved first and get our last /11. The other will potentially qualify also and then go on the waiting list, or they’ll have to choose a smaller block size.  Over the years, some IPv4 address space has been returned to the system.  A lot of that has gone back to the IANA global pool. IANA has been redistributing that IPv4 space back equally to the five RIRs. It is possible still that IPv4 address space will be returned or reclaimed, for instance, when address holders go out of business or don’t pay their fees. We didn’t expect to see that anymore with the transfer system in place, but it’s still happening. This address space will be used to satisfy requests on the waiting list.”

Vendors are slowly moving to the next IP standard: IPV6.  IPV6 increases the number of internet addresses to 340 undecillion, or 340 followed by 36 zeroes, enough to assign an IP address to every atom on Earth.  The move is happening slowly because older computer equipment wasn’t designed to be able to understand the IPV6 protocol.