Well, “today wasn’t the day” (see last Friday’s post) but ARIN have today published a new blog entry indicating that exhaustion is imminent.  Astonishing at it is, it was a bit of a slow day on Friday, but tomorrow could be the day.  It really is that close.  As of now, there are 88 /23s left and 440 /24s left, a grand total of 157,696 addresses, which is just over a /17 worth of space.  If today isn’t the day (which we shall find out early tomorrow morning UK time), then it’s going to be very very soon.  Keep watching this space…

Is today the day?

As of this morning, there were 164,096 remaing IPv4 addresses in ARIN’s pool, comprised of 101 /23s and 439 /24s.  This is somewhere between a /17 and /16, if expressed as contiguous space.  Given that on an average day, ARIN can easily allocate this amount, it’s likely that today all of this address space could be allocated, or one of the applicants in the queue opts to join the waiting list.  In either scenario, it’s game over.   At the time of writing, there is just over half an hour before ARIN closes for the day, so very soon we’ll find out whether today was the day or not.  Watch this space…

Yesterday, ARIN allocated a /13 to Time Warner Cable (formerly Road Runner).  This has reduced the ARIN pool from 0.11 /8s to 0.07 /8s.  There are now only about 1.17 million addresses left, and exhaustion could be declared at any time if someone in the queue has asked for a big block and opts to go on the waiting list.  Watch this space…

A major milestone has possibly been reached today at ARIN.  Looking at the IPv4 blocks still available according to their web site, there are now no contiguous blocks available between /12 and /20.  This means that if anyone has an application in for a block larger than a /21 and smaller than a /11, the /11 is going to get split into a /12 and one or more /13 to /20 blocks.  Currently they are down to 0.14 /8s free, and this is certainly bringing the point where an ARIN member opts to go on the waiting list that much closer forward.

If, of course, the /11 is requested (though fairly unlikely), this is going to wipe 0.125 /8s off the free pool and will leave ARIN with very little left to allocate to anyone.

Update: ARIN have now confirmed on their web site that the /11 has been split into blocks /12 and smaller.