Bach Seat

The number of U.S.  IPv4 addresses is critically low. This means that you may no longer be able to get new IPv4 addresses. Jason Verge at Data Center Knowledge cites reports from the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN). The keeper of U.S. IPv4 addresses is down to the final /8 (around 16 million addresses) and has moved into the final phase of its IPv4 countdown plan.

DCK explains that in Phase Four, ARIN will process all IPv4 requests on a “first-in-first-out” basis. Every request will undergo team review. Requests for /15 or larger will require department director approval, which may mean a longer turn-around.

Strategies delayed theIPv6 IPocalypse

Those in the know, recognized IPv4 had issues in the early 1990s. However new strategies delayed the IPocalypse. Owen DeLong, ARIN advisory council member, and director at Hurricane Electric explained. “… Network Address Translation (NAT) was developed and Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) and some other technologies that allowed us to conserve addresses.”

While those changes slowed address consumption down, DKC reports they did not stop the need for IPV4 addresses. Mr. DeLong explains that every Regional Internet Registry (RIR) has developed an “austerity policy.” Europe is more than one year into its austerity plan (rb- which I noted here).  For Asia Pacific it has been more than two years. Latin America and Caribbean Network and Information Center (LACNIC) is close to triggering its plan.

IPv4 address brokers and auction houses

In response to the shortage (and profit), a new industry of IPv4 address brokers and auction houses has arisen. Many of the IPv4 addresses have been assigned, though not necessarily used. The IPv4 marketplaces list the number of IPv4 resources that are still available. The blog says a company called Hilco Streambank launched an auction marketplace that provides liquidity for IPv4 address sellers and connects them with buyers.

Broker IPv4 Market Group believes potential legal issues in this highly regulated space make such auctions not feasible. The article says an auction winner may end up not getting the approval to get the addresses they have won. Which would leave both the buyer and seller in limbo. Some bidders are illegitimate; no contract terms are established other than pricing.

Hence, brokers are stepping in to lend end-to-end IPv4 address transaction expertise. They help with marketing, sales, the transfer process, and the financial aspects. IPv4 Market Group also provides legal and technical advice. (rb- I noted the rise of IP brokering here)

Prices of IPv4 addresses will skyrocket

Mr. Verge says auctions and brokerages are band-aids. The space will run out, potentially causing the prices of IPv4 addresses to skyrocket and making a fast-track transition to IPv6 ever more urgent.

Mr. DeLong is not a fan of either brokerages or auction houses. He told DCK, “I’m old-school in this regard … I feel that the whole idea of treating address resources as a resale commodity is distasteful at best. These are a community resources that [were] handed out without charge on the basis of actual need for the addresses. It’s pretty clear to anyone who was around in the early days that if you had addresses you no longer needed, you were expected to return them to the community for use elsewhere. I regard these monetized transfers as being more of a necessary evil to bridge a (hopefully) short-term gap and not a desirable state of affairs.”

Hilco Streambank CEO Gabe Fried responded to DCK’s concerns. “Our policy is that a buyer cannot close a transaction for any reason, we move on with the next highest bidder and prohibit that bidder from further participation … We’ve successfully completed numerous transactions that were initiated on our auction platform to the satisfaction of both buyer and seller. Additionally, the auction platform is designed only to automate the bid/ask portion of the transaction, and not to provide all of the post-closing transaction support. We still do that by hand, as we do with our traditional brokerage services.”

The ISOC provides some perspective on the urgency of getting your network off of IPv4. They calculate that one /8 of IPv4 address space is equivalent to about 65,000 /24s and ARIN has delegated an average of 92,000 /24s per year for the past three years. When you factor in that some of ARIN’s last IPv4 space is reserved, a /16 for critical infrastructure and a /10 to aid IPv6 deployment, the math indicates that ARIN could hand out its last free IPv4 addresses by the end of 2014 … if not sooner.

 rb-

I have covered the IPocalypse since 2009 and it seems to finally become a reality. IPv6 has been a non-issue for many of the engineers I have spoken with, .edu is flush with IPv4 but the rest of the world is not. 

Related articles

• Historical Lookback: IPv6 Traffic and IPv4 Exhaustion Trends (blogs.akamai.com)

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.