RIPE NCC published a policy yesterday (April 9th) that will link the ARIN, RIPE and APNIC IPv4 markets. Ripe-644 allows inter-RIR transfers between the RIPE service region and other RIR regions, which will facilitate IPv4 sales between companies across regions.
The ARIN IPv4 free pool continues to decline while the transfer market is heating up and IPv6 penetration continues at a glacial pace. In the meantime RIPE’s draft policy that would open up the ARIN market to interRIR transfers with Europe is in its final phase.
IPv6 evangelists and Internet governance institutions have been urgently calling for immediate transition to IPv6 in light of the near global depletion of the IPv4 address free pool. But companies aren’t rushing. Instead, more and more are turning to the IPv4 market to purchase the IPv4 addresses they need to operate and grow their IP-based networks. Why?
An efficient global IPv4 market will provide the Internet community 5 to 7 more years on IPv4 to facilitate a migration to IPv6 that follows normal technology adoption patterns. The depletion of the RIR free pool of IPv4 numbers isn’t the end of the road for IPv4. Two recent articles written in Information Week discuss the meaning of IPv4 exhaustion from different and opposing perspectives.