It’s Official: Switch to IPv6 as IPv4 Internet Addresses Have Run Out

Now US, Canada, North Atlantic and Caribbean islands are getting the waiting list from the American Registry for Internet Numbers. ARIN has warned that it will be unable to fulfill the allocation of a big IPv4 address block as the address pool is drying. Due this, for the first time ARIN is changing its allocation policies.

Update:  On Thursday, ARIN assigned the last addresses in its free pool. The announcement came after years of warning and people should adopt the next protocol, IPv6.

This isn’t something that has happened something out of nowhere as the global demand of IPv4 addresses has been increasing and the supply has been in peril. Apart from North America, other registries have issued similar warnings in the past and currently only African organizations can get IPv4 addresses as needed.

John Curry, ARIN CEO told Ars Technica that if a person gets a smaller block, he/she can’t apply for more space for 90 days. He added that they are currently having 500 remaining blocks and they handle about 300-400 requests per month, so these remaining blocks won’t last for more than 2-4 weeks.

But, the news isn’t so bad as IPv6 is picking up the pace. ARIN is encouraging the organizations to consider using IPv4 addresses. The supply of IPv6 addresses is enough and isn’t likely to run out “ever” in future. People saw the eventual depletion of IP addresses in the early 1990s, so they developed the new version 6. IPv6/ increases the length of IP addresses to minimum 128 bits.

So, the only real solution is switching over to IPv6 as it allows almost unlimited number of IP addresses. While some of biggest organizations are already using it, some of them are avoiding this transition as it is a time consuming process, it’s expensive and tough.

Image: Extremetech

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