APNIC close to completing delegation of its final /8 IPv4 block

The Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) on Monday announced it is close to delegating the last IPv4 addresses in its final /8 block, bringing the regional internet registry a step closer to IPv4 exhaustion. There are 16,777,216 total IPv4 addresses in each /8 block – the largest type of block into which the IPv4 …

[Tom Chiverton 1]

Yet another reason to keep ignoring ipv6 then

[Piro]

You said it yourself - ipv6 is the future

The perpetual "future", always in "the future", never the present. Long live NAT and ipv4, I guess

[tatatata]

"The IPv4 address space uses 32-bit numbering .... "

It is sad that even on the Register it is deemed necessary to explain this difference between IPv4 and IPv6.

That being said, I recently switched ISP and now I no longer have direct IPv6 access to the Internet. The problem is, that many ISPs still do not provide IPv6. And why should a company that already has IPv4 addresses invest in a technology that only a small part of its customers can use and costs a lot to switch? Only if all ISPs offer IPv6 and many ISPs use CGNAT there is a slight chance that some companies might consider investing in IPv6.

[Arthur the cat]

IPv6 is clearly the future. When you go there is up to you.

Obligatory snide remark:

arthur@arthur[2]▶ host -t aaaa theregister.co.uk

theregister.co.uk has no AAAA record

[John Brown (no body)]

IPv4 addresses are also widely traded and/or leased,

"IPv4 addresses are also widely traded and/or leased,"

Why? I thought unused addresses were supposed to be returned, since they have no "value" and are "owned" by IANA and the RIRs. Maybe it's time for them to "man[*] up" and start forcibly repatriating all those IPV4s being sold, loaned and leased and killing of the brokers making money from a "free" resource. Likewise those large orgs with huge allocations who are not fully utilising them.

*, Yeah, I know, in these modern times it should be "person up", but that just sounds so wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: IPv4 addresses are also widely traded and/or leased,

AfriNIC tried to do something like that. It created an almighty clusterfuck which is nowhere close to a resolution.

There's also a shitload of IPv4 address space that got distributed before the RIR system was created. For instance HP holds two /8s (Class As in old money). Those legacy addresses are not bound by RIR policies and their holders can do whatever they want with them.

[Alan Brown]

Re: IPv4 addresses are also widely traded and/or leased,

"Those legacy addresses are not bound by RIR policies and their holders can do whatever they want with them."

Yup. They were allocated by Jon Postel and he died without leaving instructions about how to handle them.

I'm pretty sure he would have demanded that they be returnable - but I'm also pretty sure that IPv6 wouldn't be 30-years delayed if he was still around

[Alan Brown]

A large chunk of the problem is that both IPv4 and IPv6 are intended to be SPARSELY populated and were created for routing purposes

Each level is a red/black selection - for IPv4 that's site.department.lan.host - and it was only intended to be a stopgap measure to last 5 years at most

The problem was evident even before Class B was created. The "new protocol" (IPv5) never happened (Actually it did - IPX - which turned out to be unroutable and therefore utterly bloody useless)

Trivia: On the same day in 1994 (and at the same time) that meetings were being held to thrash out the fine points of IPv6 before publication - and with a sense of critical urgency about getting it done before something came along which would result in widespread adoption of the Internet outside academia - NSCA mosaic (and the WWW) was being demonstrated in another room 3 doors down the hall)