IPv4 inventory depletion: what's really going on and how does REG.RU do it

At the end of September 2013, REG.RU updated the VPS hosting tariff line, allowing its customers to connect an unlimited number of additional IPv4, which could look somewhat unexpected against the background of a shortage of IP addresses, which has been widely reported in the international press and blogosphere for several years.

On Habre, the IPv4 crisis has been discussed for a long time - habravchane actively write articles on this topic since 2007, calling the most diverse dates for complete depletion of stocks of IP addresses. Users waited for this event at the beginning of 2011 , then on August 20, 2012 , and even tried to calculate when the IPv4 addresses would end. However, none of the predictions has not been justified.
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In addition, you can find a large number of analytical and review articles on the situation on the market of IP addresses. Some of them tell about the history of the problem , others about the pros and cons of the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 or current offers in the Russian market. We will try to combine all these topics, presenting the most complete picture of what is happening.

A few words about the mechanics of IP address allocation

IPv4 allows 4.23 billion addresses to be used by the American IANA organization. This process is as follows: IANA delegates its authority to allocate IP addresses to regional registrars (RIRs) in the form of class A (/ 8) ranges. Regional registrars, in turn, delegate smaller ranges to Internet service providers.

At the moment there are 5 RIRs:
- American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) - for North America;
- RIPE Network Coordination Center (RIPE NCC) - for Europe, Middle East and Central Asia;
- Asia-Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) - for Asia and the Pacific;
- Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) - for Latin America and the Caribbean;
- African Network Information Center (AfriNIC) - for Africa.

A bit of history

Experts began to talk about the forthcoming shortage of IPv4 addresses back in the 1980s, when the number of Internet sites on the Web began to grow rapidly. In the 1990s, to solve this problem, the Internet Engineering Council (IETF) developed a number of new technologies, including Classless Addressing (CIDR), NAT, and a new version of IP — IPv6.

Chronology of exhaustion

- In February 2011, IANA allocated to the regional Internet registrars the last five remaining blocks / 8 from its address space;
- April 15, 2011 APNIC, the first of the regional registrars, stopped the free issuance of IP addresses;
- September 14, 2012 there was a depletion of IPv4 reserves of the regional registrar RIPE NCC;
- On August 1, 2013, ARIN registrar announced that only 2 IPv4 blocks, 8/8, remained at its disposal.

IPv6 vs IPv4

IPv6 was created to solve the problems that IPv4 does not allow. First of all, this should occur by using the length of the address 128 bits instead of 32.

After the IPv4 address space ends, the sixth and fourth generation protocols will be used in parallel, with a gradual increase in the proportion of IPv6 traffic compared to IPv4. Such a situation will become possible due to the presence of a large number of “obsolete” devices that do not support IPv6 and require special conversion to work with devices that use only IPv6.

On June 8, 2011, the International IPv6 Day took place - an event to test the readiness of the global Internet community to switch from IPv4 to IPv6, in which participating companies added IPv6 recordings to their sites for one day. REG.RU, along with Google, Yahoo !, Yandex and many other companies, also participated in the testing.

One year later, on June 6, 2012, the worldwide launch of IPv6 took place. However, the new protocol has not yet become widespread. For example, in Russia, statistics on the transition to IPv6 now looks like this (data for October 2013):

In the zone .RU
Only IPv4 addresses have more than 3.4 million domains (91.84%);
IPv4 and IPv6 addresses have more than 305 thousand domains (8.16);
Only IPv6 addresses have 108 domains (0.00%).

In the zone .
Only IPv4 addresses have more than 430 thousand domains (92.74%);
IPv4 and IPv6 addresses have more than 34 thousand domains (7.26);
Only IPv6 addresses have 2 domains (0.00%).

REG.RU in the IPv4 market

Despite the fact that IPv4 is now running out, REG.RU is able to provide IPv4 addresses in practically unlimited quantities. In this case, prices are among the lowest in the market - from 18 rubles per month for 1 additional IP. You can rent IP addresses in blocks with any VPS or Dedicated tariff.

More information about the tariffs can be found here .