IP Addressing

The IPv4 Market - 2018 Mid-Year Report

The number of IPv4 transactions and volume of IP addresses flowing to and from organizations in the ARIN region in the last 6 months put 2018 on track to be the most active year in the history of the IPv4 market. Nearly 25 million numbers were transferred in the first half of this year, more than doubling the volume of numbers transferred by this time last year and continuing the level of market activity in the last half of 2017 when just over 28 million numbers were transferred. more

An Insider's Guide to the IPv4 Market - Updated

On September 24, 2015, the free supply of IPv4 numbers in North America dwindled to zero. Despite fears to the contrary, IPv4 network operators have been able to support and extend their IP networks by purchasing the IPv4 address space they need from organizations with excess unused supply through the IPv4 market. The IPv4 market has proved to be an effective means of redistributing previously allocated IPv4 numbers, and could provide enough IPv4 addresses to facilitate the Internet's growth for several more years while the protracted migration to IPv6 is underway. more

Internet Evolution: Another 10 Years Later

Ten years ago, I wrote an article that looked back on the developments within the Internet over the period from 1998 to 2008. Well, another ten years have gone by, and it's a good opportunity to take a little time once more to muse over what's new, what's old and what's been forgotten in another decade of the Internet's evolution... The evolutionary path of any technology can often take strange and unanticipated turns and twists. more

What Drives IPv6 Deployment?

It's been six years since World IPv6 Launch day on the 6th June 2012. In those six years, we've managed to place ever-increasing pressure on the dwindling pools of available IPv4 addresses, but we have still been unable to complete the transition to an all-IPv6 Internet. Nobody predicted this situation when we first thought about the consequences of running out of IPv4 addresses. We all thought that the depletion of IPv4 addresses would in a continuously expanding Internet provide sufficient rationale for IPv6. more

The IPv4 Market: 2017 and Beyond

The IPv4 market has grown significantly in the last four years. It finished particularly strong in 2017, both in terms of the total volume of addresses traded and overall number of intra- and inter-RIR transactions in the ARIN region. Over the last four years, the steady and sometimes substantial growth in the number of transactions has been mostly attributable to a dramatic increase in small block trades of fewer than 4,000 addresses. more

A Look Back at the World of IP Addressing in 2017: What Changed and What to Expect

There is no doubt that the Internet continues to grow. While the sales volumes of the more traditional forms of personal computers has peaked at some 430 million units per year and sales of handheld smart devices has also peaked at some 1.9 billion units per year, the world of the Internet of Things continues to spiral upward. The installed base of these "things" is now at an astonishing 8.4 billion at the end of 2017. more

IPv6 Deployment Around the World: A New Digital Divide?

Alain Durand, Principal Technologist at ICANN, visited Georgia Institute of Technology last week for a talk on the global adoption of Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). The Internet Governance Project organized the talk in cooperation with Atlanta's Technology Development Center (ATDC) and the Institute for Information Security and Privacy. Durand, who was involved in the IPv6 standardization efforts at IETF back in the early to mid-1990s, offered a clear eyed assessment of the protocol's critical flaw... more

Is it Finally Time to Eliminate Needs-Based IPv4 Transfer Policies?

Two weeks before depletion of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) IPv4 free pool in September 2015, we published an article recommending that the ARIN community adopt transfer policies that encourage trading transparency and improve whois registry accuracy. By eliminating needs justification as a pre-condition to updating the registry, we argued that ARIN could eliminate existing policy-based barriers that have kept many otherwise lawful and legitimate commercial transactions in the shadows. more

Internet Hall of Fame Inductees Gather at GNTC to Discuss New Generation of Internet Infrastructure

Confronted with the rapid development of the Internet, the traditional network is facing severe challenges. Therefore, it is imperative to accelerate the construction of global network infrastructure and build a new generation of Internet infrastructure to adapt to the Internet of Everything and the intelligent society. From November 28 to 30, 2017, "GNTC 2017 Global Network Technology Conference" organized by BII Group and CFIEC, will see a grand opening in Beijing. more

A Glance Back at the Looking Glass: Will IP Really Take Over the World?

In 2003, the world of network engineering was far different than it is today. For instance, EIGRP was still being implemented on the basis of its ability to support multi-protocol routing. SONET, and other optical technologies were just starting to come into their own, and all-optical switching was just beginning to be considered for large-scale deployment. What Hartley says of history holds true when looking back at what seems to be a former age: "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." more

RIPE 75: Imprssions of the Meeting

RIPE held its 75th meeting in Dubai in mid-October. As usual, there was a diverse set of presentations covering a broad range of activities that are taking place on today's Internet. The topics include issues relating to network operations, regulatory policies, peering and interconnection, communications practices within data centers, IPv6, the DNS, routing and network measurement. If that's not enough, the topic of the Internet of Things has been added as a Working Group in the RIPE pantheon. If you add address policy, database and RIPE services to the mix, you get a pretty packed five days with topics that would appeal to most Internet folks. more

Why Integrating IPAM Matters and How to Achieve It

IPAM solutions are the source of truth for IP resources on the network, but when performing IPAM functions such as assignments, reconciliations, DNS updates, network plans, or Regional Internet Registry (RIR) requests, IPAM is often limited by its integration with an OSS. Operational teams can find it challenging to complete routine tasks without an integrated IPAM solution due to siloed data pools and swivel-chair environments. more

Why Homegrown Subscriber ID Solutions Limit Problem Solving

Most service providers are aware that there needs to be a simple, fast way to identify subscribers. Unfortunately, in reality, mapping IP addresses back to subscribers for identification purposes - such as lawful interception requests or acceptable use policy violations - can be complicated. It usually involves analyzing data sets, completing manual audits, or reliance on multi-step solutions. more

CE Router Certification Opens Up the Last Mile to IPv6 Fixed-Line

With reference to IPv6, probably most end users do not have any sense of it. The mainstream condition in the industry is that network carriers and content/service providers stick to their own arguments. Carriers consider lack of IPv6 content and service as the reason demand for IPv6 from the users is very low. The content and service providers believe that users cannot have access to content and service through IPv6 and thus carriers should provide the service in the background. more

An Opinion in Defence of NATs

Network Address Translation has often been described as an unfortunate aberration in the evolution of the Internet, and one that will be expunged with the completion of the transition of IPv6. I think that this view, which appears to form part of today's conventional wisdom about the Internet unnecessarily vilifies NATs. In my opinion, NATs are far from being an aberration, and instead, I see them as an informative step in the evolution of the Internet, particularly as they relate to possibilities in the evolution of name-based networking. Here's why. more