What is Going On with the IPv4 Address Market in Latin America and the Caribbean?

30/08/2012

Organizations and individuals that are LACNIC members are publicly discussing two policies regarding the possibility of enabling the transfer of IPV4 address transfers between entities operating within the region and also to allow buying or selling addresses between entities operating in different regions.

Both proposals are currently in the process of analysis and will be addressed at the next LACNIC meeting which will be held in late October in the city of Montevideo.

Although LACNIC still has 50 million available IPv4 addresses in Latin America and the Caribbean, the possibility of transferring resources has started being discussed globally and this month a market that allows the purchase or sale of resources between different regional registries will begin operating.

APNIC (Asia), ARIN (North America) and RIPE NCC (Europe) have long had policies that allow transferring resources within their respective areas of service. The specific rules vary according to each regional registry, but generally speaking the receiving organization must demonstrate their needs, transferred blocks can not be negotiated again for a period of between 12 and 24 months, and the organization making the transfer can not request new address space for a specified period of time.

As to the transfer between organizations from different regions, only APNIC and ARIN have adopted policies that allow receiving or transferring addresses –it is anticipated that this market will be operational in August and September of this year. While both regional registries can receive and transfer addresses, a greater flow is expected from North America to Asian organizations due to the exhaustion of APNIC’s IPv4 address stock and its exponential growth.

Internet resources assigned by LACNIC are not currently subject to sale or transfer. To allow the transfer of resources within Latin America and the Caribbean or between Latin America and the Caribbean and other regions before the exhaustion of LACNIC’s pool of IPv4 resources, the community must propose and adopt a policy through the Policy Development Process.