[120751] in North American Network Operators' Group
2009 IPv6 Address Use Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Iljitsch van Beijnum)
Sat Jan 2 08:09:12 2010
From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2010 14:08:25 +0100
To: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
[ (Non-cross)posted to NANOG, PPML, RIPE IPv6 wg, Dutch IPv6 TF. Web =
version for the monospace font impaired and with some links:
http://www.bgpexpert.com/addrspace-ipv6-2009.php ]
2009 IPv6 Address Use Report
Since 2005, I've been compiling an IPv4 address use report every year. =
With the start of the new decade, this is a good moment to start doing =
the same thing for IPv6.
http://www.bgpexpert.com/addrspace-ipv6.php shows the amount of IPv6 =
space given out by RIR and by year, while =
http://www.bgpexpert.com/ipv6addressespercountry.php shows the amount of =
IPv6 address space by country. Both these pages are updated weekly from =
the delegation data that the RIRs publish on their FTP servers.
2008 saw a huge increase in the amount of IPv6 space given out and then =
a big drop in 2009 (amounts of IPv6 address space in the equivalent of =
/32s):
1999 10.88 /32s in 17 blocks
2000 19.75 /32s in 32 blocks
2001 33.13 /32s in 61 blocks
2002 156.75 /32s in 271 blocks
2003 261.38 /32s in 290 blocks
2004 13340.63 /32s in 295 blocks
2005 26985.00 /32s in 245 blocks
2006 9798.00 /32s in 243 blocks
2007 6687.01 /32s in 491 blocks
2008 81012.02 /32s in 886 blocks
2009 1091.03 /32s in 1280 blocks
However, this is not the complete picture. The large number for 2008 is =
the result of two unusual events. The first one is LACNIC's delegation =
of the 2804::/16 block to the Brazilian national internet registry =
(NIR). At some point in the future, the delegation records will not show =
such blocks as "used" in their entirety anymore. Also, ARIN delegated 14 =
/22 blocks within the range 2608::/13 to the US Department of Defense. =
With these two artifacts removed, the amount of IPv6 space given out per =
year looks like this:
1999 11.00 /32s in 17 blocks
2000 20.00 /32s in 32 blocks
2001 33.00 /32s in 61 blocks
2002 157.00 /32s in 271 blocks
2003 261.00 /32s in 290 blocks
2004 13341.00 /32s in 295 blocks
2005 26985.00 /32s in 245 blocks
2006 9798.00 /32s in 243 blocks
2007 6687.00 /32s in 491 blocks
2008 1140.00 /32s in 871 blocks
2009 1091.00 /32s in 1280 blocks
So the number of blocks given out keeps increasing, but their size is =
going down. There are two reasons for this: roughly between 2004 and =
2006, RIPE and APNIC gave out some very large blocks to some very large =
ISPs. They mostly stopped doing that. And provider independent blocks =
started to be allowed and are getting more and more popular. These are =
the /32 - /35 allocations. /32 is the minimum block size given out to =
ISPs, this used to be /35. So this view shows the numbers of =
small-to-medium sized ISPs obtaining IPv6 address space:
1999 11.00 /32s in 17 blocks
2000 20.00 /32s in 32 blocks
2001 33.00 /32s in 55 blocks
2002 157.00 /32s in 254 blocks
2003 223.00 /32s in 251 blocks
2004 235.00 /32s in 241 blocks
2005 217.00 /32s in 217 blocks
2006 186.00 /32s in 186 blocks
2007 351.00 /32s in 351 blocks
2008 734.00 /32s in 734 blocks
2009 1011.00 /32s in 1013 blocks
These are the blocks larger than /32 that go to large ISPs (excluding =
the BR NIR and DoD blocks):
2003 38.00 /32s in 3 blocks
2004 13106.00 /32s in 9 blocks
2005 26768.00 /32s in 13 blocks
2006 9612.00 /32s in 14 blocks
2007 6336.00 /32s in 8 blocks
2008 406.00 /32s in 7 blocks
2009 80.00 /32s in 4 blocks
And these are the blocks smaller than /35, which are now mostly provider =
independent blocks, but also "critical infrastructure", such as root =
servers get a /48 block:
2001 0.00 /32s in 6 blocks
2002 0.00 /32s in 17 blocks
2003 0.00 /32s in 36 blocks
2004 0.00 /32s in 45 blocks
2005 0.00 /32s in 15 blocks
2006 0.00 /32s in 43 blocks
2007 0.00 /32s in 132 blocks
2008 0.00 /32s in 130 blocks
2009 0.00 /32s in 263 blocks
So after a small dip in 2006, the number of small-to-medium sized ISPs =
obtaining IPv6 address space shows a steady upward trend, but apparently =
the very large ISPs either already got their IPv6 address space, are not =
focussing on IPv6 right now, are starting with a small block (or several =
small blocks), or a combination of all of these factors.
Even with the BR NIR and DoD blocks included, the (equivalent of) =
39395.56 /32s given out in 4111 blocks is only 0.026% of the 536870912 =
possible /32s in the currently defined global unicast space (2000::/3). =
For comparison, the number of IPv4 blocks given out is 99562.=
