The IPv4 Depletion site

The research for this report was performed under contract to and funded by

Quick Facts for the impatient

IANA pool depletion date:	2011-04-19
First RIR depletion date:	2011-10-20
All central IPv4 pool depleted:	2012-09-07
Current burnrate in weeks per /8 block:	4.5 wpb
Current burnrate in used /8 per month:	0.95

calculations from Fri Sep 3 00:40:02 2010

When will we run out of IPv4 Addresses?

This report is dynamically generated each day. This report is from Fri Sep 3 00:40:02 2010

Various studies and articles have been published in recent years with estimates concerning the exhaustion of IPv4. While no one can predict the exhaustion date of IPv4 with certainty, we all know it is inevitable. It is no longer a question of "if", but rather of "when". Various mathematical calculations, along with discussions on how different variables affect the exhaustion date are used to approach this complex challenge.

While the existing studies published on IPv4 have merits, they also have some mathematical shortcomings and they do not examine the existing and forthcoming IANA allocation procedures in detail. As a result, they tend to underestimate the projected exhaustion date.

The result of this new method is that the IANA pool will be exhausted by 2011-04-19. The first RIR exhaustion date would occur around 2011-10-20 and the last RIR would be depleted by 2012-09-07.

Compare the different estimates

There are two other key studies available with analyses of the exhaustion of IPv4:, the "IPv4 Address Report" by Geoff Houston of APNIC, and "A Pragmatic Report on IPv4 Address Space Consumption" by Tony Hain of Cisco. Neither Geoff Huston nor Tony Hain make predictions of the actual IPv4 Address Pool exhaustion as there are too many unknown factors. Both of them, however, estimate a date when IPv4 addresses will be exhausted. Huston points out that his reports should be seen as "a best case scenario". Still, those studies, especially Geoff Huston's predictions, are often referenced by others in the industry who discuss IPv6 and the exhaustion of IPv4.

The table below compares the different estimates including mine

	Huston	Hain	Lagerholm
Freshness	Daily Fri Sep 3 00:40:02 2010	2005 with updates from 2008-05-27	Daily Fri Sep 3 00:40:02 2010
Mathematical model	2nd order polynomial	Order N polynomials	Exponential and linear
Granularity	Sum of RIR	IANA pool	Individual per RIR
Fitting method	Least square fit	Least square fit	Least square fit
RIR Pool estimates	Fixed low threshold model	No discussion	Dynamic threshold model
Smoothing of data	3 pass with 3 month sliding window	No	No
Historic data used	1200 days (3.29 years)	2000-01-01 to current (9 years)	1460 days (4 years)
IANA pool depleted	2011-06-05	2010-10-01	2011-04-19
First RIR pool depleted	2012-02-05	No estimate	2011-10-20
Last RIR pool depleted	No estimate	2011-11-01	2012-09-07

Changes over time

An interesting exercise is to look how mine and Huston's prediction fluctuates over time. The graph below plots how mine and Huston's prediction have changed. The red and green line is a reference line where X=Y. Large deviations from the reference line indicates that the predictions have been adjusted.

Changes over time

Distance between predictions

Mine and Huston's predictions should slowly converge to predict the same date as time goes by. This graph illustrates the distance between the predictions over time. Ideally the distance between the estimates gets smaller as we move closer to the exhaustion date.

The table below summarize all allocations bigger than 250k made after 20100804

Size	Region	Country	less than 5 days old
2097152	apnic	KR
2097152	apnic	VN
2097152	apnic	VN
2097152	ripencc	FR	(new)
524288	apnic	CN
524288	apnic	CN
524288	apnic	JP
262144	apnic	KR
262144	apnic	CN
262144	ripencc	IL
262144	apnic	IN	(new)
262144	apnic	HK

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Burnrate allocations over 250k last 30 days
SUM: 11272192
SUM in /8: 0.671875

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Burnrate all allocations last 30 days
SUM: 15920064
SUM in /8: 0.948909759521484