IPv4 Exhaustion: LACNIC Has Assigned the Last Remaining Address Block

28/08/2020

The Latin American and Caribbean Internet Address Registry (LACNIC) announced that the last available IPv4 address block had been reserved.

During this final phase which was triggered in February 2017, we assigned more than 5.6 million IPv4 addresses. The exhaustion process has been implemented in accordance with the policies defined by the community and have been duly reported in various instances.

During the first half of August, the average number of assignments increased two-fold, thus accelerating the projected date of IPv4 address runout. This month we also registered a record number of new members (234) in LACNIC’s history.

In the future, LACNIC will continue to recover IPv4 addresses, which will then be assigned under the policies currently in force. This recovered space must undergo a six-month quarantine process. LACNIC initiated this process in March, so the first address blocks will be released from quarantine in September.

The process for requesting resources remains unchanged, and the organizations that complete the process and whose requests are approved will receive resources based on their position on a waiting list that is active as of today and will be published shortly on our website.

Coupled with the responsible management of these resources, the timely definition of policies for these address space exhaustion phases have allowed LACNIC to assign 189.3 million IPv4 addresses to more than 11,200 organizations and companies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In light of this situation, LACNIC stresses its  call on organizations across the region to accelerate IPv6 deployment in their networks and to accelerate Internet growth.