Current Status of the IPv4 Address Waitlist

24/02/2022

More than 700 organizations in the region are currently on the waiting list to receive IPv4 addresses returned to LACNIC.

The waitlist was created on 19 August 2020 when the last available IPv4 address block was assigned and is intended to create an order among organizations requesting IPv4 addresses. To be included on the list, an organization must be a LACNIC member and must have already been assigned IPv6 resources.

The wait time for the last members to receive IPv4 resources from the reclaimed address space was 400 days. According to LACNIC Services Manager Alfredo Verderosa, if the current IPv4 address assignment trend continues, wait times will likely double.

Verderosa also noted that these wait times depend largely on the number of IPv4 blocks that are returned to LACNIC, so they are very difficult to predict.

During the last year and a half, despite the small size of the IPv4 address space available for assignment, LACNIC received a large number of requests. “Requests remained at pre-IPv4 exhaustion levels,” Verderosa explained.

The 716 organizations currently on the waiting list have requested close to 600,000 IP addresses. In all, LACNIC is expected to assign some 65,792 IPs over the next six months, a number that represents 10.9% of the total number of requested addresses.

“Based on its current trend, we expect that the waitlist will have grown to 900 organizations by May of this year,” Verderosa concluded.