That’s all folks – no more IPv4 address for the US.
Most of people who use the Internet have heard of the term “IP address”.
For those who have never heard of it or do not know of it, think of it as a telephone number which connects you to a particular website.
There are a total of 4,294,967,296 “telephone numbers” or IPv4 addresses possible and they have been depleted at quite a rate for a while.
Globally, IP addresses are managed by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) spread across 5 regional Internet registries (RIR).
The five RIRs are :-
- African Network Information Center (AFRINIC)[1] for Africa
- American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)[2] for the United States, Canada, several parts of the Caribbean region, and Antarctica.
- Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC)[3] for Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and neighboring countries
- Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Centre (LACNIC)[4] for Latin America and parts of the Caribbean region
- Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC)[5] for Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and Central Asia
Asia (APNIC) ran out of IP addresses in 2011, Europe (RIPE NCC) ran out in 2012 and Latin America (LACNIC) ran out in 2014.
As at the close of business on 24th September 2015, ARIN no longer has any IPv4 addresses to give out.
What does this mean to the average person?
Probably not very much as there is now a new standard called IPv6 which should last us several thousand years at the current rate of usage for IPv4 🙂
Other links
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http://www.arin.net/knowledge/ip_blocks.html
ARIN IPv4 Free Pool Reaches Zero
Posted: Thursday, 24 September 2015
On 24 September 2015, ARIN issued the final IPv4 addresses in its free pool. ARIN will continue to process and approve requests for IPv4 address blocks. Those approved requests may be fulfilled via the Wait List for Unmet IPv4 Requests, or through the IPv4 Transfer Market.
Exhaustion of the ARIN Free Pool does trigger changes in ARIN’s Specified Transfer policy (NRPM 8.3) and Inter-RIR Transfer policy (NRPM 8.4). In both cases, these changes impact organizations that have been the source entity in a specified transfer within the last twelve months:
“The source entity (-ies within the ARIN Region (8.4)) will be ineligible to receive any further IPv4 address allocations or assignments from ARIN for a period of 12 months after a transfer approval, or until the exhaustion of ARIN’s IPv4 space, whichever occurs first.”
Effective today, because exhaustion of the ARIN IPv4 free pool has occurred for the first time, there is no longer a restriction on how often organizations may request transfers to specified recipients.
In the future, any IPv4 address space that ARIN receives from IANA, or recovers from revocations or returns from organizations, will be used to satisfy approved requests on the Waiting List for Unmet Requests. If we are able to fully satisfy all of the requests on the waiting list, any remaining IPv4 addresses would be placed into the ARIN free pool of IPv4 addresses to satisfy future requests.
ARIN encourages customers with questions about IPv4 availability to contact hostmaster@arin.net or the Registration Services Help Desk at +1.703.227.0660.
Regards,
John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)
I am curious why next to IPv4 is not IPv5, but IPv6?
My friend, Google, suggested the following explanations :-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Stream_Protocol
http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/post/what_ever_happened_to_ipv5.html
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/185380/ipv4-to-ipv6-where-is-ipv5
Due to even number, IPv4, IPv6 🙂
Maybe they were influenced by the Chinese – they like even numbers for auspicious events.