The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) announced (10-20-2010) that Interop returned its unneeded Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address space. The ARIN Press Release explains that Interop was originally allocated a /8 before ARIN’s existence and the availability of smaller address blocks.
Another press release indicates that Interop founder Dan Lynch acquired the addresses block to allow for unfettered Interoperability Testing between TCP/IP equipment vendors in the formative years of the Internet. Interop will continue to use a small part of the original grant to continue Interop’s 25-year mission to foster industry-wide interoperability while returning the rest of the address block to ARIN for the greater good of the Internet community. The organization recently realized it was only using a small part of its address block and that returning the rest to ARIN would be for the greater good of the Internet community.
ARIN will accept the returned space and not reissue it for a short period, per existing operational procedure. After the hold period, ARIN will follow global policy at that time and return it to the global free pool or distribute the space to those organizations in the ARIN region with documented need, as appropriate.
With less than 5% of the IPv4 address space left in the global free pool, ARIN warns that Interop’s return will not significantly extend the life of IPv4. ARIN continues to emphasize the need for all Internet stakeholders to adopt the next generation of Internet Protocol, IPv6.
rb-
As the original poster at Slashdot points out, if any of the other IPv4 /8 address holders return their unused addresses, the IPv4 exhaustion date would be pushed back even further. I wonder what some of these companies plan on doing with all of these IP addresses?
- HP has 32 million publicly routable addresses (16 million of its own and 16 million from DEC which HP acquired when it ingested Compaq) most of which seem to be used to handle VoIP calls to India for sales and support calls.
- Is Ford going to install a IPv4/IPv6 gateway on all the cars with My Ford Touch, an upgrade of Sync, its in-car Internet service with Microsoft?
- How is the USPS using it 16 million IP addresses?
Some IPv4 /8 Address Holders
| Prefix | Designation | Date |
|---|---|---|
| 003/8 | General Electric Company | 1994-05 |
| 004/8 | Level 3 Communications, Inc. | 1992-12 |
| 008/8 | Level 3 Communications, Inc. | 1992-12 |
| 009/8 | IBM | 1992-08 |
| 012/8 | AT&T Bell Laboratories | 1995-06 |
| 013/8 | Xerox Corporation | 1991-09 |
| 015/8 | Hewlett-Packard Company | 1994-07 |
| 016/8 | Digital Equipment Corporation | 1994-11 |
| 017/8 | Apple Computer Inc. | 1992-07 |
| 018/8 | MIT | 1994-01 |
| 019/8 | Ford Motor Company | 1995-05 |
| 034/8 | Halliburton Company | 1993-03 |
| 035/8 | MERIT Computer Network | 1994-04 |
| 040/8 | Eli Lily & Company | 1994-06 |
| 048/8 | Prudential Securities Inc. | 1995-05 |
| 054/8 | Merck and Co., Inc. | 1992-03 |
| 056/8 | US Postal Service | 1994-06 |
This gadget was developed by Takashi Arano, Intec NetCore
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.
D-Link is also providing additional security and future-proofing its routers, by migrating to IPv6 certification according to Help Net Security. With the growing number of Internet-capable devices on the market, the pool of IPv4 addresses has dropped to six percent and is expected to run out sometime in 2011. While this is a major motivation for IPv6, other improvements are also realized.
In a December 2009 report, The Future of Threats and Threat Technologies: How the Landscape Is Changing, anti-malware vendor 
