IPcalypse

The end is near. In the foreseeable future there will be no more unallocated IPv4 addresses left. Time to move to IPv6

IP addresses are distributed hierarchically. At the top there is IANA. Below IANA there are five regional distribution organizations, called RIRs. Below the RIRs there are numerous ISPs that delegate IP addresses to the actual users.

On january 31st 2011 IANA allocated two /8 blocks of IPv4 to APNIC triggering the Exhaustion Phase. This phase, the allocation of the last 5 /8 blocks one to each RIR, was announced on february 3rd 2011. This depletes the IANA IPv4 address pool.

This does not mean the IPcalypse has arrived, it only means the top of the hierarchy is out of addresses. The RIR level will still have IPv4 addresses to distribute to the ISPs, but this supply will quickly run out. Estimates vary between 3 months and 3 years.

The five RIR regions are:

The number of unallocated IP blocks (1 block is 256 addresses) at the RIRs is as follows:

RIR	# free IPv4 /24 blocks	IPcalypse date	Days left
Afrinic	220,631	Nov 11, 2019	2368 days
APNIC	72,640	Apr 15, 2011	-764 days
ARIN	401,419	Aug 27, 2013	101 days
LACNIC	175,524	May 27, 2015	739 days
RIPE	68,474	Sep 14, 2012	-246 days

As you can see parts of the world will run out of addresses before others.