It's official: The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) has run out of IPv4 addresses. ARIN, one of five Regional Internet Registries that doles out IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, announced today that it has issued the final IPv4 addresses in its free pool.
“The exhaustion of the free IPv4 pool was inevitable given the Internet’s exponential growth,” John Curran, ARIN’s President and CEO, said in a prepared statement.
“Luckily, we prepared for this eventuality with IPv6, which contains enough address space to sustain the Internet for generations," he said, adding that "organizations should be prepared to help usher in the next phase of the Internet by deploying IPv6 as soon as possible.”
ARIN warned in May that it was nearing IPv4 depletion. With that depletion a reality, Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and ARIN's board chairman, said the experimental phase of the Internet has ended.
“When we designed the Internet 40 years ago, we did some calculations and estimated that 4.3 billion terminations ought to be enough for an experiment. Well, the experiment escaped the lab,” Cerf said in a prepared statement. “The Internet is no longer an experiment; it is the lifeblood of commerce, communication and innovation. It needs room to grow and that can only be achieved through the deployment of IPv6 address space.”
ARIN said it will continue to process requests for IPv4 address blocks through its waiting list or through the IPv4 transfer market. The depletion of ARIN's IPv4 lifts the restriction in how often organizations may request transfers to specified recipients.
ARIN released an interesting infographic today that shows milestones in the Internet's growth and IPv4 address space exhaustion.
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