[members-discuss] [ncc-announce] IPv4 Exhaustion: RIPE NCC Update

Dear colleagues,

The IANA IPv4 free pool was exhausted today, 3 February 2011. Each of 
the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) has now received one of the 
final five /8s. The RIPE NCC has been allocated 185/8.

The RIPE NCC is holding reserves totaling approximately four /8s (around 
75 million individual IPv4 addresses), not including 185/8.

We will continue to distribute IPv4 addresses from our reserves 
according to the current policy, ripe-509, "IPv4 Address Allocation and 
Assignment Policies for the RIPE NCC Service Region":
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-509.html

When our reserves are exhausted, we will begin to distribute IPv4 
addresses from 185/8 according to section 5.6 of ripe-509:
http://ripe.net/ripe/docs/ipv4-policies.html#----use-of-last----for-pa-allocations

This policy states that each Local Internet Registry (LIR) will receive 
one /22 (1024 IPv4 addresses) from 185/8 upon application for IPv4 
resources. In order to obtain this /22 allocation, the LIR must already 
have requested an IPv6 allocation.

For more information about how to deploy IPv6, please see:
http://www.ipv6actnow.org

As we unable to anticipate consumption rates, we cannot fully predict 
how long our reserves will last. However, we would like to reassure you 
that our supplies will not be exhausted within the coming months.

Our Registration Services Department has seen an increase in the number 
of IPv4 requests in the last few days and is working hard to evaluate 
all requests. We ask for your patience during this busy period.

Regards,

Axel Pawlik

Managing Director
RIPE NCC