Ars Technica reports that North America is out of IPv4 addresses, and that ARIN has activated its “unmet requests policy.” ARIN, the North American registry, isn’t totally out of addresses, but the unmet requests policy is essentially a way to get in line for the table scraps of the remaining unallocated addresses.
The reality is now permanently here that even if you can demonstrate to ARIN that you need addresses, you aren’t going to get them. So, organizations that need IPv4 addresses will now need to buy them from organizations that aren’t using their full allocation. A peek at some IPv4 auction sites indicates they’re going for $8 – $10 per address, which will likely rise.
IPv6, the Internet protocol designed to succeed IPv4, is slowly picking up support. Apparently about one in five US Internet users have IPv6 access. Curious if you’re part of that one in five?
On Windows, open the Start Menu and type “powershell” in the search box. Open that up, then type
ping -6 www.google.com
On Mac, open a Terminal and type
ping6 www.google.com
If you get a “Reply”, congratulations, you have IPv6 connectivity via your ISP.
If not, then either your ISP or your router probably don’t support it (your computer almost certainly does). My router from 2010 didn’t support it, nearly 20 years after IPv6 was specified! Not everything in tech moves super fast…