LACNIC crashed through the ‘final /8’ barrier in style yesterday by allocating a smashing 2,368,512 IPv4 addresses in just one day (0.141 /8s).  This brings the total left to around 0.87 /8s as of today, and this really does signficantly reduce the time needed to reach exhaustion (which in LACNIC’s case will be when they reach the final /10, or 0.25 /8s).

Most of the addresses allocated yesterday went to Brazil, the biggest block of 1,048,576 (/12) addresses going to Tim Celular S.A. in Brazil.  Other notable blocks include 2 x 262,144 addresses (/14)  and 6 x 131,072 (/15) going also to Tim Celular at the same time.  All the others are blocks of 1,024 and 2,048 (/22 and /21) so are relatively insignificant.

All blocks apart from two were allocated to Brazil, apart from one /22 which went to Colombia and another /22 went to Costa Rica.

It won’t take many more allocations like this to bring exhaustion very very close now.  Are there any other ISPs or mobile phone companies need more addresses in the near future, I wonder?

As of today, LACNIC (the IP address registry for Latin America and the Caribbean) are down to 1.05 /8s remaining, which means that it is likely in the next day or two to have reached the final /8 that they have.  LACNIC have slightly different rules to some of the other registries – RIPE and APNIC, for example, considered their stock of IPv4 addresses to be exhausted when they reached the final /8 (16,777,216 addresses) , whereas ARIN are taking a different approach and are basically reserving hardly any, so it truly is a “race to the bottom” for that region although the requirements for obtaining a block when they reach the final /8 are much increased.  LACNIC consider their addresses to be exhausted when they reach 4,194,304 addresses (/10) left.

Yesterday there were 524,288 addresses (/13) allocated to Telemar Norte Leste S.A. in Brazil, and a further 393,216 addresses split as two blocks of 262,144 (/14) and 131,072 (/15) addresses to Telefonica de Argentina.  If this rate of allocation continues (i.e. 0.05 /8s per day), LACNIC will be out of addresses in 16 working days from now.  I suspect it won’t be depleted that quickly, but still a sobering thought, if you still have your head in the sand over IPv4 exhaustion and you’re located in the LACNIC region.