No Big Run on IPv4 in 2011

2011 was an interesting year for IPv4: in February 2011, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) handed out their last free IPv4 address blocks to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). In April 2011, the APNIC (the Regional Internet Registry for the Asia Pacific region) started allocating from its last /8. At the RIPE NCC we did not see a big jump in IPv4 address allocations in 2011, as anticipated by some observers. more»

Data Quality in the RIPE NCC Service Region

In an earlier article on CircleID, Registry Data Quality Assessment, we discussed the importance of high quality and accurate IP registry data. At that time, we focused mainly on the accuracy of legacy address space: IP addresses that were given out prior to the existence of the RIPE NCC and that are not part of the current registry system. In this article, we want to present the efforts to keep the address space that is the responsibility of the RIPE NCC up to date and well maintained. more»

DNS Measurements with RIPE Atlas Data

As described in New RIPE Atlas Features in the Making, each RIPE Atlas probe performs "anycast instance discovery" measurements. This means, for each DNS root name server, we determine which instance of a name server a probe uses. We compile the data from all probes and build maps showing these results for each Atlas probe. In other words, the map shows the "gravitational radius" for root DNS server instances. more»

IANA Checkmate - Fool Me Once, Shame on You, Fool Me Twice Shame on Me

In connection with the recent publication of the IANA RFP, there have been some commenters that have proclaimed that removing the requirement of the Contractor to document the consensus of relevant stakeholders in connection with the delegation of new gTLDs from the original draft Statement of Work as a win for ICANN. However, when reading the recently revised IANA RFP language in light of the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) Dakar Communiqué, a rather compelling legal case can be made... more»

IPv6 Deployment from a Different Perspective

Often when looking at IPv6 deployment statistics, the size of the organisation or the network is not taken into account. In this article, we look at IPv6 deployment of Local Internet Registries (LIRs) per country in correlation to the size of the LIR. When looking at IPv6 deployment at the LIR level, we can look at the following two metrics... more»

Internet and Self-Governance? An Example

At the Government Roundtable meeting in Amsterdam on 12 September RIPE NCC presented on her results on auditing Local Internet Registries (LIRs) and on the policy process concerning certification of her members. If this showed something to the world it is that cooperation with governments and law enforcement agencies (LEAs) pays off and self-governance can work. How did this come about? more»

IPv6 Transitional Uncertainties

The telecommunications industry has been around for quite some time. Whether you take it as a starting date the first efforts with the wired telegraph in the 1830's, or the telephone in the 1870's, this industry has been around for quite a long time. During this periods it has made huge achievements, and there is no doubt that the impacts of this industry have changed our lives in many ways... It is literally amazing that this industry has managed to preserve dial tone on telephone handsets while completely changing the underlying network and switching fabric of the telephone system numerous times. more»

The Invisible Hand vs. the Public Interest in IPv4 Address Distribution

In the efforts to promote the public interest over that of monied interests in Internet Governance few issues are clear cut. One issue that has recently been discussed is that of requiring a "needs assessment" when transferring IP addresss blocks from one organisation to another (in the same or different RIR regions) or indeed when requesting IP resources from your friendly RIR. more»

How Many IPv4 Addresses Does the RIPE NCC Have Left?

Since IANA ran out of IPv4 addresses, people are increasingly aware of how short the remaining lifetime of IPv4 is. With World IPv6 Day taking place this week, the issue has come into even sharper focus. Since March 2011, the RIPE NCC has been publishing the size of its pool of available IPv4 addresses. All five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) regularly publish the status of their IPv4 address pools. In the image below, you can see how the number of IPv4 addresses in the RIPE NCC pool changes over time. more»

IPv6 RIPEness: One Year Later

A year ago, the RIPE NCC introduced IPv6 RIPEness -- a system that rates IPv6 deployment of Local Internet Registries (LIRs)... Now, one year later, the numbers have gone up... In absolute numbers: more than 3,000 LIRs have IPv6 address space. This means that the RIPE NCC has made more than 1,100 IPv6 allocations within 12 months. more»