The 12 Days of IPv6: Day 6, A Look Back at APNIC's IPv4 Depletion
On Friday, 15 April 2011, just two months after the depletion of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) IPv4 address free pool:the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) announced that they had reached their last /8 block of IPv4 address space. In doing so, APNIC became the first of the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) unable to fully meet demand for IPv4 addresses.
In an article for ZDNet, “It’s Official: Asia’s Just Run Out of IPv4 Addresses”, reporter Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols examines why APNIC became the first RIR to experience IPv4 exhaustion. The answer: unprecedented fixed and mobile network growth in the Asia Pacific region.
But Asia Pacific isn’t the only region seeing an uptick in mobile network usage, which leaves many wondering which of the remaining four RIRs will be next to run out. More importantly, Vaughan-Nichols ponders whether or not this turning point in IPv4 depletion will encourage Internet stakeholders to take the transition to IPv6 more seriously.
It’s been nearly eight months since APNIC ran out of IPv4 address space, and according the 2011 Global IPv6 Deployment Survey, IPv6 adoption is continuing to progress. We suspect that as the remaining IPv4 address pools at the RIRs continue to diminish, we will see more people taking action to adopt IPv6.
The 12 Days of IPv6 continues tomorrow. Be sure to join us for Day 7 as try to think about what the world would look like if IPv6 ever failed to catch on.
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