APNIC’s pool is low.
2010-07-28
APNIC has historically allocated new addresses from IANA when their pool size has been about 2 x /8. Their pool recently got below that number so we can assume that we will see an allocation of 2 x /8 from IANA to APNIC soon.
All the RIR’s pool will be pretty well filled after this allocation. The sum of all the RIR’s and the various pool will be about 21.5 x /8. This is a historically high number. I don’t expect to see any allocations for a while until ARIN and APNIC would have to refill their pool in the November/December time frame.
After that I would expect RIPE and APNIC to allocate in February of 2011 and then finally AfriNIC snatching the last block from the IANA pool somewhere March/April of next year.
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[...] APNIC’s pool is low. Posted in External-Featured by admin on 29 Jul 2010 APNIC has historically allocated new addresses from IANA when their pool size has been about 2 x /8. Their pool recently got below that number so we can assume that we will see an allocation of 2 x /8 from IANA to APNIC soon. All the RIR’s pool will be pretty well filled after this allocation. The sum of all the RIR’s and the various pool will be about 21.5 x /8. This is a historically high number. I don’t expect to see any allocations for a while until ARIN and APNIC would have to refill their pool in the November/December time frame. After that I would expect RIPE and APNIC to allocate in February of 2011 and then finally AfriNIC snatching the last block from the IANA pool somewhere March/April of next year. Source: The IPv4 Depletion site [...]
Hi Stephan,
I’ve been trying to find the policy document(s) that show how the contents of the so-called VARIOUS pool will be distributed to the RIRs come IANA depletion day, but so far I’ve come up empty-handed. IANA’s «Global Policy for the Allocation of the Remaining IPv4 Address Space» says nothing about what will happen with these blocks, at least.
So I’m wondering if you (and Huston) are simply making an assumption that the distribution of the VARIOUS pool will happen, or if not, if you have some pointers to further reading?
Tore
Hi Tore,
As far as I know, there is no policy for how the Various pool will be distributed. I it a little bit of a mess, especially since RIPE started to use the 188/8 block a few years ago: http://www.ipv4depletion.com/?p=70
I had a conversation with Houston about a year and a half ago and as far as I understood him he hinted that there is a agreement between the RIRs to divide the various equally between the RIRs. Whether the 188/8 block was suppose to be included here is unknown to me. Who knows, maybe RIPE will get less than the others because they started to chew on their part of the various block a little to early.
All those assumptions are configurable in the tool, so you test how they affect the depletion dates.
But it is messier than that! This is not the only undocumented agreement that exist. There is also the gentleman’s agreement that a RIR only should grab 2 x /8 per allocation. In reality the policy is that the should allocate sufficient space for 9 months demand, that could be as many as 5-6 blocks at a time. Who knows, maybe a RIR get’s greedy and takes the full allocation now when supplies are low? The fact that there is an undocumented agreement between the RIRs for how the future growth and stability of the Internet will be handled is worrisome.
There is also no publicly available records on how the RIRs justifies the space they allocate. A RIR can ether allocate because their pool is low or because of some unforeseen event (I don’t remember the exact wording in the policy). What if a RIR claims that they need 2 x /8 because of some unforeseen event and IANA grants them this? The allocation paperwork is not available for the public so we will never know how the RIR justified the space. I have been asking IANA and NRO to release those records without any success. I’m especially interested in understanding how LACNIC can justify 2 x /8 blocks for their allocations. IANA is refering me to NRO and NRO refuses to send this information to me.
Conclusion: make sure to be prepared (as I’m sure that you are) for IPv6 at the IANA depletion date. It will be a messy after that date…
/S
Hi again and thanks for your reply!
I certainly am ready for IPv6 and depletion day. In fact, I look forward to it – right now it feels like I’m watching a train crash about to happen in slow motion: It’s going to be messy, but it’s inevitable, so I’d rather we just got the crash itself over with, so we can get started with the cleanup process. I’m a bit impatient actually.
It wouldn’t surprise me that the RIRs feel the same way, after all they’ve been trying to encourage IPv6 adoption for a long time now and I bet they’re eager to see it pick up some pace too. For that reason, and also the fact that they are not-for-profit organisations, I would be extremely surprised if any of them «got greedy» and made an unexpectedly large allocation. But I guess we’ll see soon enough…
Tore
Use of VARIOUS. It isn’t just RIPE that are using the VARIOUS assigned areas. AFRINIC seem to have been doing that recently to, which, if they keep doing so, might meen APNIC get the final assignment.
Karen
Tore,
I don’t think that they will do anything stupid either. It just surprises me that the transparency into what the folks at the RIRs and IANA is doing and how this is suppose to be handled is so low.
Karen,
Thanks for letting me know. I was not aware of that. I can see about 27,000 IPv4 addresses from the 196/8 block that AfriNIC delegated in 2010. So it is not that much (compared to RIPE that basically used up all the 16 million addresses in the 188/8 block). If they continue to delegate from the 196/8 we might very well see APNIC snatching the last block.