ARIN, APNIC Agree to Transfer IPv4 Addresses

Internet authorities in both Asia and North America have agreed to transfer some IPv4 addresses from North America to Asian countries to help ease demand there.

Business, universities, telecoms and others will be able to obtain IPv4 addresses in an agreement between the Asia-Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) and the American Registry of Internet Numbers (ARIN (News - Alert)). ARIN is one of five regional Internet registries (RIR) in the world authorized by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to give out IP addresses.

In the past, IP addresses have been required to stay in the region in which they were originally assigned. The agreement between ARIN and APNIC allows addresses to be transferred across the Pacific as long as certain conditions are met. Organizations that want to transfer IPv4 addresses must show that they really need them in an attempt to keep speculators from hoarding IP addresses.

Until recently, inter-regional transfers have been rare. “Since every region has had IP address space available to it, there hasn't been a lot of demand for inter-regional transfers," ARIN president and CEO, John Curran (News - Alert) told CIO-ASIA.

The agreement comes as the number of IPv4 addresses dwindles. There are three remaining blocks of addresses in North America with about 16 million addresses each. APNIC stopped issuing new addresses and now strictly rations them. The transition to the next generation, IPv6, has been slow, despite all of the IPv4 addresses having been allocated.

ARIN won't transfer its unallocated blocks, but will move addresses that have already been assigned and that owners want to give up. There is already a system in place to move addresses, which had been mostly employed in bankruptcies. Entities that want IP addresses in North America can still obtain them from ARIN.

“Today, when we have a demand party coming from a region outside of ARIN, we need to match them with supply in their own region,” Josh Bourne of Kalorama Group said. Kalorama is a “facilitator” that matches sellers of IP addresses with buyers.

Other RIRs in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Europe are also discussing similar agreements to the one between ARIN and APNIC.

Since IPv4 addresses are already tapped out, businesses might concentrate on IPv6 instead.

“We probably need 40 or 50 billion IP addresses,” Curran said. “So we can move around the v4 ones to better use them, but I don't know if a lot of companies are going to invest significantly in them, because it's recognized that there's only so much life left in that engine.”

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