Don’t count on recycling to maintain IPv4 address pool

March 18, 2011 Off By David
Object Storage
Grazed from Government Computer News.  Author: William Jackson.

The American Registry for Internet Numbers, the regional registry that oversees address allocation for North America, has established an online listing service to help bring together organizations that have IPv4 addresses to spare and those that are looking for a few more addresses. But don’t expect this marketplace to delay the transition to the next generation of Internet protocols, according to the registry.

“Even the successful return of more /8 [address blocks] would not significantly increase the lifetime for IPv4,” ARIN states on its website.

 

 


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IPv4 is the current generation of protocols, and after more than 20 years, the pool of available addresses is drying up. To accommodate the growing use of IPv6 addresses, Internet service providers and other organizations eventually will have to enable the new protocols in their networks.

 

“Despite the small gains,” regional registries are working to step up their recovery of unused IPv4 address space, according toARIN. At the same time, the Specified Transfer Listing Service “provides a way for organizations to either advertise their available IPv4 address space or contact an organization with space to arrange a transfer.”

STLS is available at the registry’s website.

If you can’t get what you need there, the good news is that ARIN has plenty of brand new IPv6 address space available.