The big news today is that RIPE has officially reached their final /8 of IP4 addresses and exhausted their free pool. Per RIPE’s final /8 policy, no new IPv4 Provider Independent (PI) space will be assigned. RIPE follows on the heels of APNIC, who exhausted their IPv4 pool on April 14, 2011. What are your IPv6 plans?
Europe officially runs out of IPv4 addresses
Earlier today, the RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre) announced it is down to its last “/8” worth of IPv4 addresses. This means that it is no longer possible to obtain new IPv4 addresses in Europe, the former USSR, or the Middle East, with one small exception: every network operator that is a “RIPE member” or “local Internet registry” (LIR) can obtain one final block of 1024 IPv4 addresses. To fulfill these requests, the RIPE NCC is keeping that last /8, which contains 16.8 million addresses, in reserve.
RIPE NCC Begins to Allocate IPv4 Address Space From the Last /8
On Friday 14 September, 2012, the RIPE NCC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, distributed the last blocks of IPv4 address space from the available pool.
This means that we are now distributing IPv4 address space to Local Internet Registries (LIRs) from the last /8 according to section 5.6 of “IPv4 Address Allocation and Assignment Policies for the RIPE NCC Service Region“.
This section states that an LIR may receive one /22 allocation (1,024 IPv4 addresses), even if they can justify a larger allocation. This /22 allocation will only be made to LIRs if they have already received an IPv6 allocation from an upstream LIR or the RIPE NCC. No new IPv4 Provider Independent (PI) space will be assigned.
It is now imperative that all stakeholders deploy IPv6 on their networks to ensure the continuity of their online operations and the future growth of the Internet.