IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

Fri Feb 22 14:40:46 UTC 2008

On 22 feb 2008, at 14:01, <michael.dillon at bt.com>  
<michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:

> If one were to sum this up briefly, would it be correct to
> answer the MIT myth by saying:

>   MIT has only 17 million addresses but China has 140 million.
>   Along with Japan at 142 million, these are the top two holders
>   of IP addresses with the USA trailing at 48.5 million.

Huh? Where do you get 48.5 million?

> Due to
>   legacy allocations which are often used wastefully due to legacy
>   technology, the USA is often quoted as having 1,411 million IP
>   addresses but this does not reflect the current rules under which
>   IP address registries operate.

It's possible to identify the legacy /8s (especially now they're  
called exactly that in the new IANA file) but this is not as easy for  
the legacy class B space, which is about the same amount of address  
space. Alternatively, you can simply ignore everything before a  
certain cutoff date. As of 1994, the RIR system was gaining steam. If  
we add up all the space given out since 19940101 until now (ignoring  
what has been returned in the intermediate):

United States                     US       500.595 million
China                             CN       139.853 million
Japan                             JP       101.713 million
United Kingdom                    GB        65.524 million
Germany                           DE        58.945 million

However, there were still a few legacy /8 given out as late as 1998.  
So looking at everything delegated since 1999:

United States                     US       278.055 million
China                             CN       134.824 million
Japan                             JP        89.883 million
Germany                           DE        53.072 million
South Korea                       KR        51.153 million

So the US has AT LEAST 278 million non-legacy addresses allocated/ 
assigned. Also, some of the legacy blocks, such as 4/8 and 12/8 are de  
facto used by ISPs to address customers. Whichever way you slice it,  
the US is the largest holder of address space by a factor of more than  
2, and, until 2007, the largest user of new address space.

(See http://www.bgpexpert.com/addressespercountry.php and http://www.bgpexpert.com/addrspace.php 
  )

> In addition, since we are likely
>   to use up all possible IPv4 addresses by 2011,

No, that's when the depletion of the IANA pool is predicted. The RIRs  
also hold 400 million addresses for their day-to-day operations, which  
will take at least another year, maybe two, to deplete.