The volume of IPv4 numbers transferred in the RIPE NCC transfer market has declined since 2014, but all evidence points to a lack of supply driving the decline, not a lack of demand.
A report out of RIPE Labs finds that 78% of the total IPv4 space transferred through RIPE NCC in 2017 was attributable to transactions between related Local Internet Registries (LIRs), leaving only 4.6 million IPv4 addresses transferred in “arms-length” transactions.
These latest numbers continue a downward trend in the volume of IPv4 numbers transferred since 2014, likely caused by a decline in supply, not demand.
The number of transactions has grown slightly, however, as the remaining available numbers are sliced and diced into smaller block sizes (/24 - /21), which continue to be the dominant prefix sizes transferred in the marketplace.
