IPv4 addresses in Latin America and the Caribbean are running out

The number of remaining IPv4 addresses for Latin America and the Caribbean has shrunk to four million. This means that the stock for this area is officially exhausted and stricter rules for issuing the remaining ipv4 address blocks come into effect.

This was announced by the Lacnic, the organization that is responsible for assigning IPv4 address blocks, among other things, on Tuesday. As a result of the depleted stock, the organization is introducing stricter rules for the allocation of these IP addresses. Requests for address blocks will also be examined more closely. In practice, according to Lacnic, this means that IPv4 addresses for ISPs from Latin America and the Caribbean have now actually run out.

Raúl Echeberría, CEO of the Lacnic, says that the IPv4 addresses that can still be issued are far from sufficient to meet the needs of the region. Since the Lacnic was founded in 2002, the organization has issued a total of more than 182 million IPv4 addresses. Echeberría stresses that getting ipv6 addresses in the region is now more important than ever; governments and ISPs have been postponing its introduction for some time.

Half of the remaining 4 million addresses will be given away in blocks of 256 to 1024 IP addresses. Once these 2 million addresses have been allocated, current members of the Lacnic will no longer be able to request ipv4 addresses. The remaining addresses are reserved for new members of the Lacnic. RIPE, the European organization that distributes ip addresses to internet and hosting providers, distributed the last ipv4 address blocks in September of 2012.