Yesterday, the Asia-Pacific registry got the last two blocks in the central IPv4 pool.

The IANA has been sitting on five /8s (one per regional registry), and these will be handed out (along with the fragments from the legacy class B space), one to each registry. The IANA IPv4 registry doesn't yet reflect this.

This is the first milestone in IPv4 depletion. The regional registries will start to run out later this year. Most likely, Asia-Pacific will run out first, followed by Europe, then North America. The South American and African registries will last longer, as there's much less demand for IPv4 addresses in those regions.

The Asia-Pacific registry estimates it will run out of IPv4 by the end of this summer.

It was fun while it lasted.

By Derek Morr, Senior Systems Programmer, Pennsylvania State University. Visit the blog maintained by Derek Morr here.

Related topics: IP Addressing, IPv6, Regional Registries