Organizations Controlling IP Addresses
The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is the Regional Internet Registry for Canada, many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands, and the United States. ARIN manages the distribution of Internet number resources, including IPv4 and IPv6 address space and AS numbers. They also facilitate policy development by its members and stateholders along with providing services related to the technical coordination and management of internet number resources. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) controls numbers for protocols, the country code top level domains, and maintains the IP address allotments. IANA delegate allocations of IP address blocks to RIRs and administer the data in the root nameservers, which form the top hierarchical DNS tree. The Asia-Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) is the regional Internet registry for the Asia-Pacific region. APNIC allocates IPv4 and IPv6 address space and Autonomous System Numbers. They maintain the public Whois Database for the Asia-Pacific region and reverse DNS delegations. There are approximately 4,294,967,296 addresses possible for IPv4. There are approximately 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses possible for IPv6. According to Lynn (2011) the world is running out of IPv4 addresses because “due to the large number of people with home networks, Wi-Fi routers, DSL modems, gaming consoles, and more, IPv4 just cannot keep up with all of these devices in the homes of people”. After much research, I think that it will be mid-2014 when all the IPv4 addresses are completely exhausted. The reason for still assigning IPv4 addresses on the internet is because most routers and modems are still running on IPv4 software, along with many household computers and electronics. Until IPv4 is completely depleted out and can no longer be used, providers will still issue out IPv4 addresses. I do not foresee very many companies hoarding IP addresses not to turn back in to
References: Uknown (2012). The Number of Possible IPv6 Addresses: Read Out Loud. (2012). Retrieved from http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/05/26/the-number-of-possible-ipv6-addresses- read-out-loud/ Lynn, Samara (2011, January 28). IP Addresses Are Running Out: What You Need to Know. PC Magazine. Unknown. (2012). American Registry for Internet Numbers. Retrieved from www.arin.net Unknown. (2012). Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Retrieved from www.iana.org Unknown. (2012). Asia-Pacific Network Information Center. Retrieved from www.apnic.org