State of IPv4 Address Exhaustion Around the Globe

On Sept. 14, RIPE NCC (Regional Internet Registry Network Coordination Centre), one of five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) that allocates Internet addresses, announced that it has started to hand out IPv4 addresses from the last block that it holds. This will make RIPE NCC, which allocates addresses for Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East, the second of the world’s five RIRs to run out of IPv4 addresses. APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) was the first one to run out on April 15, 2011. Moreover, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) announced on Sept. 19 that has entered phase 2 of IPv4 countdown, with only three /8 blocks of IPv4 addresses left, or just enough to meet requests for another year. It is expected that ARIN will start handing out its last block of IPv4 addresses in August 2013. IPv4 address space is expected to start running out in Latin America in 2015 and in Africa in 2019.

As IPv4 exhaustion is quickly becoming a reality, it is now imperative that companies and other organizations deploy IPv6 on their networks to ensure the continuity of their online operations and the future growth of the Internet. Without IPv6, billions of people will never get to use new Internet services and applications that companies are working on today. Additionally, the long-term overall cost of not deploying IPv6 is higher to both individual companies looking to grow and to the global Internet as a whole.
Other consequences of not deploying IPv6 are:
1. Increased costs
2. Disruption to Websites
3. Reduction in global business growth
4. Diminished user experience

The Internet Society created the Deploy 360 Programme, which provides real-world IPv6 deployment information. Deploy360 aims to bridge the gap between the IETF standards process and final adoption of those standards by the global operations community. Deploy360 creates and promotes resources that are easy to understand and quickly actionable by the very IT professionals responsible for the implementation of new technologies and standards like IPv6 and DNSSEC.

On June 6, The Internet Society announced the World IPv6 Launch to motivate organizations across the industry to prepare for and permanently enable IPv6 on their products and services as IPv4 address space runs out. Since the launch, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of IPv6 space in use on the Internet, and great progress continues to be made on the deployment front.

In terms of progress being made on IPv6 deployment, more than 70 percent of the U.S. organizations participating in the launch in June are currently reachable over IPv6, including Google, Facebook, YouTube and Yahoo (as of Sept. 24). However, there is still work to be done—without action on IPv6 deployment, costs will rise, functionality for users will become limited and growth of the Internet as a platform for innovation and economic development will be curtailed.

As organizations across the world transition to IPv6, five leading global Internet organizations—IEEE, Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Society and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), jointly developed and formally endorsed the OpenStand Principles, a set of open principles for standards development that calls for cooperation among standards organizations; adherence to due process, broad consensus and transparency; balance and openness; commitment to technical merit, interoperability, competition, innovation and benefit to humanity; availability; and voluntary adoption. The OpenStand movement promotes a modern paradigm for global, open standards—the same standards that have allowed the Internet and World Wide Web to fuel economic and social transformation, and the model that has been a driving force in developing protocols like IPv6. The OpenStand Principles will be integral in the continued success of the Internet as a platform for innovation and borderless commerce. Since last month’s OpenStand announcement, 10 more organizations that play key roles in the global Internet community have formally endorsed the OpenStand principles.
Source: open-stand.org

The federal government set a deadline of Sept. 30 for transition to IPv6 for government public facing servers, but according to NIST the government is sorely behind. According to NIST, only 17 percent of U.S. government domains are IPv6-enabled, 37 percent are in the process of being enabled and 46 percent are showing no progress at all.

According to NIST, only 33 percent of U.S. government network services have been IPv6-enabled, 2 percent are in the process of being IPv6-enabled and 65 percent are showing no progress at all.

According to NIST, only 1 percent of university domains have been IPv6-enabled, 28 percent are in the process of being enabled and 72 percent are showing no progress at all.

Akamai said it saw an increase of 460 times the number of requests for IPv6 services on IPv6 launch day in 2012 than it saw on that day in 2011. That is 3,394,971,156 on June 6, 2012, versus 8,343,590 on June 8, 2011.

Akamai said it saw an increase of 67 times the number of actual IPv6 addresses on IPv6 launch day in 2012 that it saw on that day in 2011. That is 18,999,253 on June 6, 2012, versus 280,229 on June 8, 2011.