Dire IPv4 shortage could hamper competition
THE EUROPEAN IP address coordinator, RIPE, has run out of key blocks of addresses and says that any companies wanting to acquire numerical web real estate will be put on a waiting list.
According to RIPE, only companies that have previously not been allocated addresses will be able to apply. The shortage could impact new internet service providers or cloud operators that would rely on obtaining IP addresses to push their products.
The registry said it had run out of /22 blocks, which represent 1,022 addresses, and companies would now be limited to /24 blocks, which contain only 256 addresses. Given that service providers need roughly the same amount of addresses as customers, this will pose challenges.
RIPE will keep scraping the emptying barrel and refilling it with addresses that are returned to the pool, but the organisation noted that “these small amounts will not come close to the many millions of addresses that networks in our region need today”.
IPv4 addresses have been on the endangered list for years, but the news from RIPE is a timely reminder that the industry has been too slow in migrating to IPv6, a standard with dramatically more addresses.
One reason that established internet companies have chosen to remain with IPv4 is inertia, but there are also suspicions that established web companies see a shortage of IPv4 addresses as a convenient barrier to entry for upstarts.
“For the established and steadysize providers it’s not much of a problem, but a new provider looking to grow exponentially might have issues,” explained Andrew Ferguson, a network expert with
Thinkbroadband.com.
The UK, with a largely stagnant pool of ISPs, will not be badly hit but companies elsewhere in Europe may struggle to get on the ladder. “The maturity of the market in the UK helps, since with the race to full fibre it does not need extra IP addresses,” continued Ferguson. “Most people will migrate with their existing provider, so the pool needed will not grow massively.”