IPv4 Exhaustion

In the middle of a panel on IPv4 exhaustion at NZNOG.  As background, the RIRs through ICANN are proposing that when ther are either just 5 or 10 /8s left, IANA will be deemed to have exhausted its IPv4 stock and will allocate 1 or 2 /8s to each of the five Regional Internet Registries.  Up until that point they get allocated on demand.

Geoff Huston, who is speaking here, has a site which predicts IANA will run out of IPv4 blocks in July 2011, and the RIRs will run out by Sep 2012.  This means there is less than five years to have some pretty significant IPv6 deployment.  Of course these dates may change, as people conserve addresses more and/or make unused space available to others.

There are currently 42 out of 256 /8s unallocated.

Most of the debate hasn’t been about when they will approach exhaustion, but how significant it will be, and will any migration be easily managed or somewhat panicked.  Bit like Y2K!