Internet Authority allocates final IPv4 blocks

Asia Pacific received its final IPv4 address block today, as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) issued the world's last unallocated addresses to regional internet registries.

Regional registries AfriNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, RIPE NCC and APNIC - the latter of which represents Asia Pacific - each received about 16.5 million IP addresses.

APNIC was said to have triggered the final IPv4 allocation when it received two of the final seven address blocks on Tuesday.

According to APNIC executive council member and Vocus Communications director James Spenceley, Australia was among the world's top five countries in terms of IP address space allocations last year.

"The Australian market has definitely seen some progress in community investment for IPv6 services and equipment, but there has been very little progress at the end user level," he said.

"The IANA exhaustion should serve as a wake-up call to Australian ICT, and the wider business community, to move this issue to the fore as a top priority in 2011."